


choosing my confessions

by De_Nugis



Series: confessions [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-24
Updated: 2012-03-24
Packaged: 2017-11-02 11:10:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam’s in love with his brother, sleeping with an angel, and hunting. Dean is trying to make a life. They’re still essential to each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	choosing my confessions

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This is AU from late s6 in its backstory, not because I set out to depart from canon but because it took me forever to write it (like, _forever_ ). [Last Call](http://archiveofourown.org/works/171625) [warning: will majorly spoil this one’s ending!], which picks up around where this leaves off, was written just after 6.16, so this can count as diverging from that point. Some revelations and events of 6.17-22 still stand, others do not. In particular, Cas did not absorb the Purgatory souls, Sam’s Wall is still in place, and the Dean and Lisa situation doesn’t include the events of 6.21.
> 
> 2\. Many, many thanks to cordelia_gray for the amazing beta work. This fic is infinitely better for her efforts; remaining flaws and infelicities are all me. Title from R.E.M., “Losing My Religion.”

“I want to try,” says Dean.

“OK,” says Sam. He knew this was coming, has known since the day Dean mentioned with studied casualness that Lisa and Matt had broken up. He’s been campaigning for it, even, if only because if he didn’t Dean might eventually wonder why. And, well, Raphael is dead. Dean killed an archangel and averted take two of the apocalypse, but he’s not happy. This isn’t where he wants to be, not any more.

Of course, getting Dean to do what Dean wants is ten times harder than getting him to do what he hates. Even though it’s Dean’s idea, Sam practically has to resort to that police head-ducking thing to get him to climb into the car. Then Dean drives off, too fast and too slow, like he’s being pursued by Furies but left the parking brake on. Sam watches the Impala out of sight and then walks to the skanky dive across from the motel and gets drunk.

Dean calls the next morning. Nothing’s certain, Lisa wants to take it slow, but for now he’s staying. 

Sam swallows three aspirin and drinks about a liter of water, powers up the laptop and finds himself a hunt. Dean wouldn’t forgive him if he got himself killed right now. He finds something he can do by himself, not too much risk. He’s scrupulously careful. The hydra is very, very dead when he’s done. 

Dean gives him the Impala, of course. And he leaves his tapes there, too, in their old box. Sam listens to them on the long drives. That first Christmas Dean hands him a brightly wrapped iPod Touch, with a card that just reads “Moron,” and Sam sets up the jack in the car again. But when he’s a thousand miles away from Dean he still reaches for the tapes, even though they’re breaking, one by one.

Dean loves him. It’s not enough. Story of their fucking lives. At least these days it’s Sam’s problem, not Dean’s.

 

_Sam’s fifteen, sharing a bed with Dean. Money’s short, it always is, and anyway Dad likes to keep his eye on them. He was gone three weeks before this, came back with a crusted wound and a stink of Jim Beam, but when he deigns to be there they’d better be under his eye at all times, yes sir. No goofing off in their own room._

_Sam’s hard. He’s been dreaming of something. Not, like, moonlight and girls. There was shouting and the smell of blood. He’s clutching at Dean now, like he had after nightmares when he was a little kid. But when he was a little kid he wasn’t rutting a hard-on into Dean’s hip._

_Dean opens his eyes. Sam’s frozen. Dean’s nose wrinkles muzzily._

_“Dude,” he whispers, “Not your fucking girlfriend.”_

_Sam feels his face flush hot and painful._

_“I’m, uh, going to the bathroom,” he whispers back._

_Dean sniggers quietly. “You do that, Sammy,” he says._

_Sam disentangles himself and flees. Dad is still snoring in the other bed. Thank God. Sam shuts the door of the bathroom as quietly as he can. He leans against the wall by the toilet and pulls his boxers down. His dick is hot and red, bobbing up stiff and ridiculous. He can’t touch it, not after what just happened. But he can’t go back and lie down beside Dean like this, either._

_He’ll have to be quiet. He pulls up his t-shirt and stuffs the soft cotton in his mouth. It smells of Dean._

_That’s not when it starts. Sam goes on dates, has girlfriends. He’s a normal kid. He goes to college. He has a boyfriend. He meets Jess._

 

Sam visits Dean and Lisa every couple of months. He sits on the corner of the denim sofa in their living room after dinner, asks Ben how soccer is going, works on liking Lisa. And he does, she’s cool, she’s good for Dean. Sometimes at the end of a day of liking Lisa Sam feels like he’s run a marathon or dug a whole cemetery’s worth of graves, but it’s not that it’s hard. She’s cool. 

Dean turns on a game or puts in a movie, once Ben’s gone upstairs to listen to his music or do his homework. Sam leans back in the flickering light, watches the way Dean’s lips close around his beer bottle, the shape of his hand turning a tumbler of whiskey (too often, still – Sam catches Lisa’s eye, sees her thinking the same thing). Remembers Dean’s hands busy tending the guns, the intent look he’d get, the way he’d grab at Sam, those times he’d almost died, cradle his face, fingers warm and urgent. 

It’s easy, looking back, to imagine more. A kiss, Dean’s lips bruising his mouth. Dean’s weight bearing him down, assuring them both that they were still there, in the crazy shifting quicksand their lives had been. From that it could go wild, it could go anywhere. Dean hot inside him, Dean’s mouth on him, Dean slammed against some garishly papered wall, panting under Sam’s hands. 

The funny thing is how half the time the wrongness of lusting after his fucking _brother_ is buried in the sheer adolescent embarrassment of it all. Like he’s fifteen again. Sam eases himself from the couch, adjusting the hang of his overshirt, and carries his empty bottle into the kitchen. God. He leans against the fridge for a moment, pretending to choose between Coke and another beer. In the end he pours a couple of fingers of Dean’s whiskey and goes back into the living room. 

 

The first time Sam sees Cas since Dean’s been with Lisa it’s been seven, eight months. He’s covered with demon blood. Sam is, that is. Sorry, Sam’s a bit confused on this one. Cas is wearing his trenchcoat and it’s about as clean as usual. 

It’s been twenty-eight minutes since Sam killed Jerry Benson, 41, Radio Shack employee of Loveland, Colorado, in front of his wife and daughters. He’d had no choice. No goddamn choice. The exorcism hadn’t worked and the demon was going for the girls. So Sam went in with Ruby’s knife and Jerry bled like a stuck pig. Sam is soaked in it, stinking with power and desire. A hit of that blood, a few ounces, maybe, and he could have pulled the demon, could have left those kids’ Dad alive. 

He’d done the right thing, though. Killed an innocent man and walked out on the nightmare the rest of that family’s life will be and worn his suit of demon blood back to the Knight’s Inn.

The police will be coming. There’s a chance they’ll be there to shake the hand of the guy who took down a madman before he could murder his kids, but Sam needs to be gone. He stumbles into the bathroom and throws up and wipes his sleeve across his mouth, then freezes. There was blood on the sleeve. There’s blood on his lips. He yanks the nearest towel from the rack, scrubs at his mouth, spits into the toilet till his mouth is dry. 

He’s shaking too much now to drive, too much to get his clothes off and get into the shower. Just a few drops. Then he could at least get up from this abject collapse and take a fucking shower. He’s clothed in it but he’s got nothing. Needle stopped on empty. Someone else has to do this.

“Fuck,” he says to the rim of the toilet. Then, “Dean.” 

But Dean will look at him with that look, the one he has when Sam’s face is masked in blood. And Dean’s not here. A thousand one hundred and fifty miles of road, Sam’s brain supplies. Give or take. 

“Castiel,” he tries next. Which is actually more reasonable. Might as well go for the one who can hear him praying. “Cas. I could use some help. If you can make it, I’d, you know. Thanks.”

Apparently now Sam can pray to the porcelain god and get an angel.

“That is demon blood.” Castiel is standing in the bathroom doorway, looking gravely at Sam in his bloodstained huddle next to a toilet full of unflushed vomit. They must make quite the tableau.

“I didn’t drink,” says Sam. “He’s dead.”

Cas frowns. Then he crouches down beside Sam. 

“Who is dead?” he asks.

“Some guy. Jerry. The demon. His name was Jerry.”

Castiel nods, filing away the information, but still puzzled. 

“Why have you called me?” he asks. “You were able to kill the demon. You don’t require my help. There are no angels involved here, not that I know of.”

This would be easier if Cas were puking from having scarfed down all the hamburger meat in a ten-mile radius again so Sam had someone to share the moral low ground with.

“I need to shower,” Sam says, enunciating carefully. “I need. I need someone to take off my clothes. To take them away.” 

Because if he pulls off his own shirt right now he’s going to be sucking on it like a baby with a pacifier.

“I am an angel of the Lord,” says Cas mildly, like it’s a relevant conversational gambit. Sam doesn’t really have an answer. 

“Yeah,” he says, because he figures that’s all-purpose and generic enough. 

Cas starts to unbutton Sam’s shirt, studying each button like it’s an exotic bug, though for heaven’s sake he must do this, dressing and undressing his vessel’s body like a Ken doll. There’s no Jimmy left to help. Sam had been there in Lucifer when he killed Castiel at Stull, felt the distinctive absence of human soul before he’d smashed angel and body with a flick of his fingers. 

Cas carries on methodically, and Sam cooperates, holding up his arms, staggering to his feet so that Cas can drag his jeans past his hips. The blood’s soaked through to his boxers, a shameful damp patch like he’s jizzed in his pants or pissed himself. Cas pulls them down and Sam hops awkwardly from one foot to another to get them off. He’s standing there in his socks, greyish white sweat socks with sagging elastic. There isn’t any blood on them. Cas gathers up the clothes, folding them neatly. 

“I will dispose of these,” he says, “You should wash.” And he’s gone in an echo of wings. Sam flushes the toilet. Then he steps into the bathtub in his socks and turns on the shower as hot as it will go.

The room’s empty and quiet when Sam comes out, but clean clothes -- jeans, t-shirt, boxers and a hoodie – are piled on the bed beside his duffel. There’s a bottle next to them, neck resting on balled-up socks. Sam picks it up. Tequila. _Expensive_ tequila, holy shit. Cas probably stole it. 

Sam’s stopped shaking, he realizes, looking at the bottle steady in his hands. He can drive. He downs a couple of shots from one of the plastic motel room cups and gets the hell out of Dodge.

He calls Castiel a couple of times after that, when he runs across something more biblical than usual, but Cas doesn’t show. War in heaven. Things never end just because one Big Bad is gone. War in heaven takes precedence over playing Sam’s sponsor for Demon Blood Junkies Anonymous, that’s for sure. 

 

Then Dean goes missing.

Sam’s in western Pennsylvania, dealing with a charming period ghost -- she commits mayhem, kid you not, with a spindle -- when Lisa calls.

“Is Dean with you?” she says, without so much as a hello.

Sam glances automatically at the other bed – he never gets singles – which is pretty fucking stupid. The bedspread’s not even rumpled.

“Why? He’s not home with you guys? What’s going on?” 

Lisa’s breath hitches. She’s upset. Sam climbs out of bed and starts pulling on clothes. This isn’t going to be good.

“He left work early yesterday,” she says. “Carl, he works on Dean’s crew, he says Dean just put his tools away, 3:30 or so, and clocked out, not a word. He hasn’t been home. He hasn’t called. His phone’s going straight to voicemail.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you call last night?” says Sam. He’s throwing stuff in his bag.

Lisa doesn’t fight back, which just makes the fury and panic climb higher in Sam’s throat. It’s not like Sam doesn’t know why her first instinct was to keep him out of this. Lisa’s never trusted him. In some ways she knows him better than Dean does. It’s always possible Sam’s surrender was just a ploy, a strategic retreat. If he doesn’t know for sure, he can’t see how she could. 

“I thought . . . he goes off. Not often, just for a few hours, but now and then he just checks out and goes off. I thought it was that. But it’s been eighteen hours. He’s never been gone overnight.”

“Do you not get it? Are you stupid? There’s stuff out there. There’s stuff out there gunning for Dean. If my brother vanishes, you goddamn well tell me.” 

There’s no fucking way he should be talking to Lisa like this, but God damn it, he gave up Dean to her and she’s gone and fucking lost him. The familiar flood of purposeful rage scalds through him, shaping him, and it’s not good, but it means he can get things done, it means that he’ll find Dean. 

“Listen,” he says, “Don’t go to work. Set the salt lines. Make sure the devil’s traps aren’t broken. Keep the weapons handy and don’t let Ben go out. Don’t let anyone in but me or Bobby Singer, and make sure it’s really us before you do. I’ll call when I find something.” He hangs up without a goodbye.

The GPS puts Dean’s phone in Kokomo, IN. Doesn’t mean Dean’s there, of course. It goes straight to voicemail, like Lisa said. Sam calls Bobby, sets him on the research, anything in that area Dean might have heard about, anything that might have heard about Dean. He prays to Cas and gets nothing, but maybe that’s good. Cas would probably’ve shown if Dean were really in trouble, at least if it were a heaven and hell thing. Then Sam gets in the car and drives.

Dean’s phone is at a bar. So is his truck. Bobby has nothing, nothing on Kokomo, nothing around Battle Creek, nothing at Mike’s Tavern. Sam sits in the parking lot for half an hour, watching people come and go. No one’s eyes flash or go black. No one sprouts tentacles. The EMF meter is silent. Dean’s still not answering his phone. Eventually Sam shoves an extra flask of holy water in his pocket, checks his gun once more, and goes in.

Dean is sitting at the bar. The glass in front of him is almost full. He goes on staring at it when Sam slides onto the stool next to him. He smells of liquor and no shower.

“Hey, Sam,” he says.

“I’ve been calling,” says Sam. “So has Lisa. She’s pretty worried, man.” He should be cutting Dean with silver and adding the holy water to his glass. Except he’s fairly sure this isn’t that kind of a deal.

“Yeah,” says Dean, “I figured.” His eyes go to his phone, on the bar by his elbow, then shift away. 

“What the hell are you doing here, then?” says Sam. 

Dean shrugs. “Drove for a while,” he says, “Here’s where I ended up.” He doesn’t sound drunk. He doesn’t sound anything.

“You spent the night in a bar?”

“They close at one. Slept in the truck.”

“If you’re on a nostalgia kick for life on the road, you could at least get a motel room. You gonna call Lisa, let her know where you are?”

“You just stay out of this. Haven’t you got a hunt or something?”

“Spook with a spindle. It can wait. Talk, Dean.”

“Don’t really have anything to say, Sammy.” 

Sam’s fist clenches. He’s still got it, the rage that would have wiped out an army of demons to get to Dean. It’s right there, ready to turn against the slump of defeat in Dean’s shoulders, the flatness of his voice, every time Sam hasn’t saved him and it’s been Dean’s fault. But it won’t break Dean out of this. Even if Sam wants to slam Dean up against the wall till whatever it is shakes out of him, he’s got enough sense left to know where that would lead. It wouldn’t be Dean who broke and started spilling secrets, not if Sam got his fist in Dean’s t-shirt, right under the vulnerable hollow of his throat. Not if he could press Dean’s body into some solid surface till he agreed to stay there, stay safe, stay Sam’s.

Instead Sam waves the bartender over and gets Dean’s check. Looks like he’s been drinking steadily, but not enough to be really drunk. Sam pays up and leaves an overgenerous tip. 

Dean’s tipsy enough, or something enough, that he walks right by his truck to the Impala, tries to fit his key in the lock. Sam takes it out of his hand, but he doesn’t open the door yet, just leans back, watching the McDonald’s across the street. There’s a lot of stuff Dean won’t say face to face that he’ll sometimes get out when he’s not looking at Sam, when he’s got his car at his back.

“Unless you tell me not to, I’m driving you home,” Sam says. He feels the car settle a bit, Dean leaning beside him. Sam keeps his eyes on the golden arches.

There’s a long space of silence, Dean shifting uneasily. They’ve got a 99 cent meal special going across the way. Sam should probably get some food into Dean. There wasn’t anything solid on that bar bill. 

“Sorry I dragged you out here,” says Dean at last.

“No problem, dude,” says Sam. “You ready to go?” But Dean doesn’t move.

“You remember that thing with Gordon, when we met Lenore, way back?” he asks.

After Dad died. Hard to forget. Sam remembers how casually Cas had reached out and broken Lenore, too, a few years later. Another poor sucker who couldn’t stay off the blood.

Dean goes on. His voice is slow, a little slurred. Thoughtful, almost relaxed.

“There was a vamp at a mill, remember? I killed it with a giant saw. Freaked you out.”

“Yeah,” says Sam. He remembers Dean spattered with blood. 

“Big fucking saw. Been around tools my whole life, you know. Both lives.” His whole life and his whole death, he means. Sam tenses, the way he does when Dean alludes, however distantly, to hell. 

Dean is speaking quicker now, almost stuttering.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be. Other guys on the crew, they don’t have stuff in their heads when they pick up a drill. They go home to their wives and their kids and it’s just been a day on the job.”

“You could do something else,” Sam says. “No tools. Data entry, or something. Something boring.” 

“I guess,” says Dean. He sounds about as convinced as any man who’s just been offered hypothetical data entry as a band-aid for hell. Sam risks a sideways glance. Dean’s face flashes from light to dark in the passing headlights.

“Seems like it suits you, though, building stuff,” Sam ventures. “You’ve always been good at it.” 

It feels natural to Sam, Dean building houses. Places for other people’s unbroken families to live. Structures to keep them safe. Maybe cars would be more his thing, less fraught. But there’d still be tools.

“I guess,” says Dean again. His voice has gone shut down and sullen. Damn. Sam got it wrong again. 

“Well, not something you have to decide in a bar parking lot at midnight,” Sam says. “Come on. It’s going to be, like, three AM by the time you get home.” 

“I shouldn’t be there,” Dean says.

“Yeah, you should,” says Sam. 

“It’s not what you’d want for your kid,” and Dean sounds accusing, like there’s some actual kid, Dean’s nephew or niece, and Sam’s making bad decisions, like he probably would. But that’s a mathematical impossibility these days, Sam and that kind of a life. Sam’s known that a long time now.

“Dude, I don’t think Lisa would be shy about kicking you out if she thought you were bad for Ben. She’s pretty damn clear on taking care of her kid. You wouldn’t be there if she didn’t see that you’re good for him.”

“I went to hell, Sam. I went to hell and I brought it back with me. Carry it everywhere I go. Track it into their fucking homes. Kids like Ben. Women like Lisa. I sawed open their ribs – all the right tools, Sam -- and let them watch while I took their hearts out.” Dean’s half-turned now, edging close, breathing whiskey in Sam’s face. Sam’s heart speeds up.

“You gotta stop torturing yourself with that, man,” says Sam, and winces. Bad word choice. “No one could have held out. It, you, you didn’t change. It didn’t change you. You’re still the good guy.” Dean wasn’t the one who came back a soulless monster.

Dean snorts mirthlessly.

“You don’t understand,” he says, “You couldn’t. You don’t understand what it’s like to come back, to walk around knowing those things.”

“Yeah, you made sure of that.” The words are out of Sam’s mouth before he’s conscious of planning to say them. Dean stares at him incredulously.

“What, you’re fucking jealous because I remember hell and you don’t?” he says.

Sam snaps his jaw shut like Dean clipped him, because maybe he is. Not just mad at the missing memories, not knowing what he did, not knowing what was done to him, but not knowing Dean. That part that Dean will never share, even if he has to make Death build a wall in Sam’s brain to keep him out. 

“Don’t be stupid,” he says, because that’s not quite a lie. Dean’s face goes stubborn and scared.

“It could kill you, Sam,” he says. “You don’t get to mess with the Wall when it could fucking kill you. Anyway, it’s different. You didn’t do anything down there. You don’t have to remember.”

Sam did plenty when he came back. But there’s no use arguing with Dean’s protective martyr act. He’ll never give it up, never. At least it’s diverted his mind from brooding on his goddamn sins.

“Let’s go,” says Sam.

Dean doesn’t argue when Sam mandhandles him into the Impala. They can worry about getting Dean’s truck back later. He doesn’t pass out or talk while they drive, just stares ahead. Sam makes a pit stop at a too bright all night diner, gets Dean a burger and fries and a Coke, steps around the side to call Lisa and let her know they’re on the way. Dean looks at the food with that cold, heavy look, but he eats a fry or two, unwraps the burger and stares at it, takes a bite, then another. Then he rewraps the papery foil and puts it in the bag and shoves the bag under the seat, but he drinks the Coke.

“Lisa cooks the healthy stuff,” he says. “Quinoa salads and, like, things with yogurt. Some of it’s pretty good, but I don’t know, it’s weird. It’s weird having a table. Real napkins, the cloth kind.”

“I’m sure you’re horribly uncouth,” says Sam. “Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be there. One of us should do that shit. And Ben loves you.”

They pull into Dean’s driveway a bit past three. Dean eases the car door closed instead of slamming it. Ben will be sleeping. There’s a light downstairs, though, and Lisa opens the door before Sam and Dean reach the steps. Sam comes up behind Dean, to catch him if he suddenly passes out or to drag him off to kill and burn things if Lisa gives him the boot. Or just to see what happens or something. Dean’s shoulders are defensively hunched, Lisa’s taut and furious. But she grabs Dean and kisses him fiercely.

“Thank God,” she says. Then she shoves Dean’s chest. “You fucker.”

“Sorry,” says Dean dully. “Shouldn’t have taken off on you. Shouldn’t have done that.”

Lisa sighs. “We’ll talk about it in the morning, OK?” she says. Dean nods and trudges off down the hall. He doesn’t look at Sam or say goodbye. 

Lisa stands at the door like she’s just too tired to move. She’s wearing sweats, and her hair is tied back in a messy ponytail. Her eyes are puffy and shadowed. She glances over her shoulder towards where Dean’s dragging steps have fallen silent in the living room and her mouth pinches, worried and unhappy. Sam clears his throat and she turns like she’d forgotten he was there. 

“I said some stuff I shouldn’t have, when you called,” Sam says. “Sorry.”

Lisa shakes her head impatiently. 

“You were scared,” she says. “You care. Look, Sam. Let’s not pretend. I don’t really like what you are in his life. But you care about him, I know that. And you brought him home safe. If you need to crash, if you want to make sure Dean’s all right, you’re welcome to stay.”

They’ll never work this out, Dean and Lisa, not with Sam looming between them, dragging Dean back. And if they don’t work it out Dean will wash up in more bars with that empty face.

“I shouldn’t,” Sam says. “I left a spindle-wielding ghost on the loose in Pennsylvania. Tell Dean I resent him dragging me away from a classic spook.”

Lisa eyes him somberly for a moment. Then she tugs his head down and kisses his cheek. Sam’s so startled he almost steps backwards down the steps.

“Take care,” Lisa says, like she means it. She turns back into the house while Sam is still blinking.

Sam stands for a moment after the lock snicks, watching until Lisa’s shadow appears against the shade in the living room window. Then he heads back to the car. It’s not worth finding a motel. He’ll pull over somewhere and sleep for an hour or two on the way back to Pennsylvania.

Dean calls the next day, stilted and awkward. Like maybe Lisa told him he should call. Sam can’t tell if things are OK with him, with them. Dean turns the conversation to Sam’s hunt.

“A spindle, dude?” he says, “Really?”

“Far’s I can tell,” Sam says, “One hundred percent authentic spectral spindle.”

“Don’t let her get you, Sammy. That would just be embarrassing for all of us.” 

Sam smiles into the phone. “I’ll take care,” he says.

Sam gets a spindle jab in the fleshy part of his arm, but he burns the bones without further damage and sits back against the tomb next door till the flames die and he can fill in the grave. Then he heads to the ER and lets them give him antibiotics. Puncture wounds are nothing to mess with. Some petty, immature part of his brain still generates scenes where he dies and Dean really fucking misses him, but that fantasy’s a whole lot less satisfying when you’ve seen it for real. 

 

_Sam’s twenty-four, and Dean is dead in his arms._

_Sam’s twenty-four, and Dean is dead in his arms._

_Sam’s twenty-four, and Dean is dead in his arms._

_Sam’s twenty-four, and Dean is dead in his arms._

_You’d think it would be a fucking cure. It’s not. The few hours, one or twenty-three or whatever, that Sam has Dean, any given Tuesday, he’s fixated. Every breath. Every hair. The waxy follicles, the faint smell of them. Every time Dean’s stomach rumbles or he farts, every crack of his joints. The way his blood’s going to spill, the way his brains will spatter on the wall. Maybe if Sam held on tighter, deeper, maybe if he set his mark on living flesh, it couldn’t be taken away. Maybe Sam should get to have this. Dean wouldn’t remember._

_Sam doesn’t. Not because he has any human scruples left, not by then. Because he doesn’t want to find himself fucking a corpse._

_The whole six months, after Wednesday, Sam never even jerks off._

_When Dean dies on him again, Sam fucks a demon. She’s wearing a dead girl._

 

Sam’s totally forgotten, with everything, that he’d called Cas when Dean first went missing. But when he comes out of the ER into a pallid, overcast morning, holding his little orange bottle of pills, there’s an angel standing by the car.

“I am sorry I could not come sooner,” Cas says without preamble. “Is Dean well?”

Sam looks at the strange/familiar figure, mussed dark hair and intent blue gaze fixed on some middle distance between particular and abstract. He looks like an accountant. He looks like an angel of the Lord.

“ _Well_ might be pushing it,” Sam says. “But he isn’t hurt. I found him. He’s back at Lisa’s. Sorry, I should have let you know he’d turned up. I forgot. Hope I didn’t drag you away from anything.”

“Nothing of consequence, at the moment. You were in a hospital. Are you injured?”

“Got poked in the arm by the ghost of a spindle-wielding granny. Good thing Dean’s not here. He’d never let me hear the end of it.”

Sam unlocks the car absentmindedly and pauses, hand on the door.

“Hey, how come you can track me, but you didn’t know where Dean was?” he asks. At least, he assumes Cas didn’t know where Dean was, that if he had he’d have gotten away long enough to tell Sam. 

“I don’t think you will like the answer.”

“Spit it out, Cas. Do I, like, smell of demon blood or something?”

“Nothing of that nature. You smell of grave dirt and smoke and hospitals. It is a combination I associate with Dean as well. It is not unpleasant.”

“Too much information, Cas. Also, wrong information. I wasn’t looking for feedback on body odor. I was asking how you could track me. You put those sigils on our ribs.”

“I cannot track you,” says Cas, “The sigils are still in place. I can track the car. A device I borrowed from Crowley. That is why I thought you might dislike it. Dean gave the car to you, so it is you I can find. I have no device in his vehicle.”

“Oh,” says Sam. “You’d better not tell Dean.” Dean gave him the Impala, sure, but he still takes every scratch personally, let alone another demonic homing beacon. And he’s not over the Cas working with Crowley thing. 

“I won’t if you won’t,” says Cas gravely.

“Well, he’d have both our asses,” says Sam. “I can do enlightened self-interest.”

It’s cold and starting to drizzle and Sam hasn’t slept in two nights. Dean’s not around to give him shit for getting stabbed with a spindle and letting the angel bug his car. He looks at Cas. Cas is watching an elderly man come out of the doors to the ER and lean against the wall to light a cigarette with shaking hands, next to the sign that forbids smoking within 30 yards.

“I’m getting breakfast,” Sam says, “Want to tag along?”

Every seat at the diner down the block is taken, white coats and scrubs and tired faces. Sam orders himself the giant breakfast special to go. Cas goes for tea. Sam drives them back to the motel. Cas gives the room a quick, incurious glance and settles down with his tea to watch Sam eat. It’s weirdly easy, maybe because Sam’s at that stage of tired where things lose their power to surprise him. He pushes the syrup-smeared styrofoam aside. Cas is regarding him placidly, apparently not in a hurry.

"You know,” says Sam, “Dean said a funny thing to me."

"Your brother is often witty."

"Not that kind of funny. And you only think that because Dean skewed your taste. No. He said, he asked me if I was jealous. If I envied him because he remembers hell. And the thing is, yeah, maybe I do, a little."

Sam’s not sure why he’s talking about this, and to Cas, who brought him back and lied about it and left his soul behind, however unintentionally. Maybe _because_ Cas did that stuff. Cas is the perfect confessor, really, an angel who’s in no position to judge. Not when it comes to Sam and memory and hell. 

"Hell is quite unenviable," Cas answers. 

"I know. I know that. And I don't want to be a gibbering wreck to prove some point. Shit, Cas. I got a glimpse, you know. Dean and I worked a case in Rhode Island, that first winter. Turns out I'd been there before. Soulless me. And it triggered something, some kind of flashback seizure. A faceful of hell, Dean said. I don't want to go back there. I don't want to know what else is dammed up there. But I hate not knowing.”

Cas levels a look at Sam that’s almost accusing.

“It is likely that the Wall will fail eventually. That you will know whether you wish to or not,” he says.

"Maybe I just want to get it over with."

Cas folds his hands on the table, pushing aside Sam’s litter of discarded creamers.

“When it falls, you will probably not survive,” he says. “Your mind will be destroyed. It is something that I, at least, would prefer be postponed as long as possible.”

Which is nice of Cas. But Sam’s onto something now, figuring it out, one thing tumbling into place after another, like when he gets the vital piece of info on a case.

"That isn’t even it,” he says. “You know, when I was a kid,” – of course Cas doesn’t know, it’s not like he’s interested in Sam’s childhood, but he’s here, he’s still listening – “After I found out what was out there, what Dad did, I hated the whole thing. It scared me. Dean and Dad would go off and I'd never know if they were coming back. I hated the training. I hated getting hurt. I hated them getting hurt. But I always felt left out, too. Stupid, huh? Pissed at being excluded from something I was fighting tooth and nail not to be a part of. Now there's another Winchester club I'm not a member of. And, and it’s more than that. It's Dean. It's like, if I could get in, if I could share that bit of him, I could have him." Lisa couldn't. That's one card Sam holds that Lisa can never trump. 

Sam stops, wondering how much he just admitted. Horrified at this thing he’s pulled out of his mind. But it’s a relief, too, like having an impacted tooth out. He doesn’t want to look at Cas. He picks up his plastic fork, examines the soggy bits of egg stuck to its tines. Cas doesn’t say anything.

"I shouldn't have him, of course,” Sam says, in case Cas doesn’t get that Sam’s clear on that. “I know I shouldn’t. It’s beyond fucked up. I know, fuck, I know it’s monstrous. You got him out, Cas. Some days I'd drag him back there, just to have him." And that’s the last of it. Sam drops the fork and raises his eyes.

Castiel is looking at him like he’s posed some mathematical conundrum, not like he’s just revealed he’s the worst person in the world.

"You have not done so,” he says. “You let Dean go. You have not destroyed the Wall."

Sam laughs, a painful strangled half cough.

"Yet,” he says. “So far. Anyway, maybe I'm just not so fond of hellfire. Don’t think I get to claim lofty intentions on this one."

“A lack of lofty intentions may be as well,” says Cas, “Judging by past experience.” 

Sam can’t tell if that’s a joke or a judgment or both. 

“Sorry,” he says. “Didn’t mean to subject you to all that. You seem to catch me at a lot of low points.” 

“I did not catch you. You summoned me,” Cas corrects. “You do so at times when I can be of use to you.”

Cas’s voice is level, uninflected by irony, but Sam still winces a bit. 

“You know it goes both ways, right?” he says, “If you ever need a hunter or something.” 

“There is nothing with which you could help,” says Cas. “Heaven is not your province.”

Sam snorts.

“Tell that to heaven,” he says.

“I have done so,” says Cas. “I have obligations to you and to Dean. I owe you debts. Different debts. I meant to rescue you, Sam. But when I found that I had failed, I allowed Crowley to use the situation. It was necessary. I do not regret it. I could not have anticipated that Dean would succeed against Raphael. I could not have known, and Raphael had to be stopped. But you have a right to ask some compensation of me.”

That isn’t right, not really. It’s not like that. They’re friends, of some sort, even if they’ve each used the other. Cas is a friend. But Sam’s not about to refuse whatever permission Cas is granting him. Cas is so close, at the source, closer than Dean will ever let Sam get. Sam leans forward, scrutinizing the angel’s face as though he could bore through his eyes and see what he’s seen, find his way through to what’s in his own head, locked up behind the Wall. He grips Cas’s wrist. Cas doesn’t move his hand away.

"You were there,” Sam says. “You saw hell. You found Dean there. You found me there."

"Yes,” says Cas, “I saw you. I saw you both. There is nothing to be ashamed of, for either of you. You deserved salvation."

"You were there," says Sam again. He's breathing close, invading personal space the way Cas usually does. Cas stares back, impassively intense. Sam’s heart is hammering against his ribs. It’s right here, right through here. Everything Sam doesn’t know. What he can’t get his hands on. He kisses Cas, a hard, genuine kiss, probing, trying to go deeper. 

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. It’s not like he was expecting to be kissing Cas in the first place. What happens is that Cas seizes his shirt in both fists, lifts him out of his chair, and slams him against the wall, hard enough that it drives the breath out of Sam’s lungs. Cas doesn’t look angry, though. More curious. 

“Why would you want this?” he asks.

That’s a good question. Sam isn’t sure he does want it. But he’s getting hard. The way Cas is pinning him with his eyes. The way he’s holding him against the wall like it’s nothing. So he can’t break away. So he can’t do anything disastrous. Except maybe this.

“I want to know,” he says. “I need to know.”

“What?” says Cas patiently. “What is it that you need to know?”

Dean. Hell. Sam. The Sam behind the Wall. The one who could break out, and go to Lisa’s, and get Dean. It’s not like Sam’s in the Cage, now. When he’d made Dean promise, before, he’d thought that he’d be in the Cage.

“You were there,” says Sam a third time. It was Cas who’d told him what he’d been, that missing year. He was there. At the Cage, after. Like the chorus, like a judge. 

“I was there,” says Cas. “I meant to save you. To give you back to Dean,” and now it sounds like Cas is asking for something, too. 

Then Cas kisses him, pushing his tongue into Sam’s mouth, more an attack than an exploration, he is some kind of fucking General, after all. His lips are firm and dry. 

Sam presses back, hands coming up to Cas’s shoulders, but Cas doesn’t give way, though he backs them slowly towards the bed, lies down under Sam while Sam unbuttons the white accountant shirt, explores Cas’s throat, his chest. He’s still wearing the goddamn trench coat. It’s spread out under them both. Sam straddles Cas’s hips, nips at his jaw.

“I could do it, you know,” he says. “Show up on Dean’s doorstep with a hunt he couldn’t refuse. Or put my fist through the Wall. He couldn’t stop me. No one would stop me.” Sam can put the barrel to his chest and they still won’t pull the trigger. He can reach out and take the knowledge he wants, if he chooses. Like he’d taken power, taken revenge. He closes his eyes, panting, rocking down against Cas with a sharp, painful friction. 

Then he’s on his back, Cas’s trenchcoated forearm pressed across his throat. His legs are spread, dangling off the edge of the bed, Cas’s thigh hard between them.

Cas is _strong_. Sam’s never done this, never slept with someone who made him know they could overpower him on a whim. Brady. He’d seemed a little weedy, even, compared to the Sam Winchester Dad’s training had made. The demon had been too perfectly controlled ever to bleed through. Sam never glimpsed it, those months they’d been together, before Jess. And Ruby, Ruby would never have made a show of her strength. He remembers lifting the body she wore, swinging her easily onto his lap, remembers her laughing, clenching round him as he slid her down onto his cock. The way she tossed her head and moaned when he thrust up. The taste of her blood.

“Cas,” he chokes out, and the angel’s other hand pinions his wrists.

“I will not let you,” Cas says. “I will not let you destroy yourself. I will not let you destroy Dean. You don’t have to worry.” His teeth close on the tendon of Sam’s neck, and Sam’s hips jerk up convulsively.

“What are you, my fucking angel with a flaming sword?” he asks.

“If necessary,” says Cas. No, Castiel. This isn’t the angel with the nickname right now.

That must be what Sam wanted to hear, because everything in his mind gives way, like a fire falling in on itself, blazing up, and it can run wild, run anywhere, because Castiel will hold him back. He pulls Cas’s mouth down against his.

It’s quick, violent, nothing but spit for lube, Cas’s blunt cock breaching him in a single, powerful shove. Tears sting Sam’s eyes at the burn. He wraps his legs high, pulls Cas in, digging his heels into his ass, and at the same time he holds him off, hands wrestling against his shoulders. A counterforce. Cas fucks hard, in an even rhythm. He’s completely silent, though Sam grunts as he takes each thrust. 

Cas shifts angle, nails Sam’s prostate, and Sam lets out a surprised shout. His sweaty hands slip on Cas’s shoulders. Before he can recover his grip, Cas has his arms pinned again in a hard twist. Sam turns his head and bites at Cas’s forearm, but Cas’s hold is immovable. He’s not sweating, but his blood tastes salt. For the first time, when Sam’s teeth break his skin, Cas makes a sound, an indrawn hiss. He leans forward and drives in, hard, harder, and Sam pushes back to meet him. He’s full up, cloven in two, almost whole. Cas stills, throws back his head, throat exposed, and comes in shuddering pulses. Sam is still hard and unsatisfied. 

Cas bows his head for a moment, eyes closed, as though he’s collecting himself, gathering back whatever he just expended. Then he pulls out, releasing Sam’s arms. Sam gropes for his dick. But Cas touches the inside of his wrist, gently this time, moving it aside. He slides to his knees between Sam’s spread legs and takes the crown of Sam’s cock in his mouth.

Sam’s so oversensitized that he’s ready to shake apart at the first touch of wet and warmth, his balls achingly tight, pressure coiled at the base of his spine. Cas’s fingers feather over the shivering skin of his belly. His thumb finds the groove of Sam’s hip and strokes, soothing. Sam groans and grabs at Cas’s hair and Cas lets him, relaxes his throat while Sam jerks his hips in a shallow thrust and spills. Another goddamn confession, sealed behind Cas’s lips. 

Sam lets his head fall back on the bedspread. His brain fuzzes out for a while.

“Where the hell did you learn to do that?” he asks, when he can form words again. It may not be the politest question, but it’s _relevant_. Because holy fuck. So to speak.

Cas’s expression shuts down. “Balthazar, primarily,” he says shortly. “He was insistent on the importance of physical sensation. We worked together very closely, for a time.”

A quick jumble of memories flashes through Sam’s mind, Dean shouting, the dazzling flare when Cas had stabbed his friend.

“Shit,” says Sam, “Sorry.” He reaches out cautiously, touches Cas’s shoulder. Cas shrugs.

“You have no cause to be,” he says. “It was my action, not yours.”

“Still,” says Sam. He’d drained a woman’s blood while a demon stole her body. At least Balthazar had been himself when he’d died. At least there’d been anger, betrayal, honest feeling, when Cas had killed. That makes it better somehow. 

“I am sure he would find this particular outcome of his persuasions amusing,” says Cas dryly. Sam isn’t sure what to make of his tone. Perhaps pounding Sam into the mattress is some kind of tribute to Balthazar’s memory for Cas. Or a penance. Sam sits up, fights off a moment of headrush. 

“I’m going to clean up,” he says.

Cas is still there when Sam comes out of the bathroom, though Sam half expected he’d be gone. He’s restored his clothes to their customary neatness. Sam pulls on sweats, stumbles towards the clean bed. It’s caught up with him, the lack of sleep, Dean standing against the car and staring back into hell, Cas hearing Sam’s confession and holding him down, fucking him. Sam just wants to sleep. He climbs into bed and pulls the comforter up, adjusts the pillow under his cheek. Cas is standing at the bedside like he’s planning to stay all day, watching Sam’s dreams like a fishing heron. Sam shuts his eyes, feels Cas’s stare, opens them again.

“Mmm?” he says interrogatively. Cas needs to get whatever it is off his chest so Sam can go to sleep.

Cas opens his mouth, closes it, then comes to a visible decision.

“I almost destroyed the Wall,” he says. “There was a moment . . . to deflect Dean, to prevent Raphael’s victory, I would have done so. Perhaps you would have thanked me.”

“Maybe,” Sam mumbles into the pillow. He’s really fucking tired. “Dean would’ve killed you, though.” 

If Cas wanted some reciprocal absolution, he doesn’t get it, because Sam’s asleep. When he opens his eyes it’s dark outside and he’s alone in the room. He wonders if there’s a morning after (evening after, whatever) etiquette to this, if one’s supposed to pray to the angel one had sex with, if it’s considered polite. He wonders what the hell that was. Next time he needs Cas’s help or Cas needs his it’s going to be weird. But Sam feels better. Not so hollow and messed up. The burning ache when he climbs out of bed feels like gratitude.

He orders a pizza with a bizarre assortment of veggies, eggplant and broccoli and shit, and calls Dean, just to see how he’s doing, if the life is back in his voice.

 

The second time that Sam has sex with an angel is possibly anticlimactic. He’s in Wisconsin, there’s a fair. And there, by God, is a butter sculpture Last Supper. 

He could call Dean, of course. But Dean can’t just show up. He can’t get Dean here to see it. And, anyway, it was Jess he’d watched _The West Wing_ with, not Dean. He doesn’t know if Dean even knows who C. J. and Toby are.

Castiel doesn’t really understand, beyond the religious reference. The second time Sam has sex with an angel there’s a _West Wing_ marathon playing on his laptop the whole time.

Sam is probably scarred for life.

Cas sticks around afterwards. Sam doesn’t find it hard to believe that Sorkin’s best beats some celestial battlefield. They sit against the headboard and watch C.J. flirt with Toby. Sam always liked Toby – Jess couldn’t stand him -- but C. J. Cregg, man. She’s enough to distract a guy from being in love with his brother and sleeping with an angel. 

Jess had thought Sam’s C.J. thing was cute. Sam looks at Cas’s face, calmly contemplative, no doubt taking in misleading details of US governmental process. It’s weird to see Cas overlaid with the ghost of someone other than Dean.

“Is Dean well?” Cas asks on cue.

Of course, it’s only the one ghost he and Cas have in common.

“He seems good. He looks better these days. Like he’s been sleeping.” 

More and more, too, there are names in Dean’s talk when Sam’s there. Guys he works with. Neighbors. Sam can feel Dean hovering on the verge of suggesting a barbeque or something while Sam’s visiting, getting him to meet these Josés and Alicias, these Mikes and Carls and their branching tangle of families. Sam always sidesteps.

“He is happy, then.” Cas sounds wistful. Sam looks at him sidelong.

“You could see for yourself,” he says. “Drop by. I know you guys weren’t exactly on the best terms, there at the end, but Dean gets over stuff. I should know. He’d like to see you. You’re family to him.”

“May I ask you about something?” says Cas.

“Sure,” says Sam.

“I deceived you as well. I used your soullessnes, though I did not bring it about intentionally. And you opposed opening Purgatory, as Dean did. Yet you don’t seem angry.”

That’s so not what Sam was expecting (OK, maybe it’s just him, thinking every confession will be about Dean) that he laughs.

“When it comes to working with demons and pride goeth before a fall, dude, I live in the world’s largest glass house,” he says. 

“I see,” says Cas. “Is that why you have continued to hunt, when Dean chose not to? Because if you owed any price for things you have done, Sam, I think you have long since paid it.”

“Doesn’t feel like it counts,” says Sam slowly, running his thumb over the rim of the plastic cup he’s got tequila in. Cas likes tequila. “Not when I don’t remember paying it.” Not when he came back and racked up another bill. A bill he’s not even allowed to see. “Anyway, that’s not the reason. Not the only reason. It’s, I don’t know, Cas. I kind of need this. It’s complicated. Don’t know what else I’d do, anyway.”

Sam still keeps lists. People he’s maybe saved, people he’s gotten killed, though he’s long since given up the superstition that the difference matters to his salvation. 

“When you have been at war for a long time, it becomes difficult to stop being a soldier,” says Cas. “My avoidance of Dean since Raphael’s death is not solely because of our differences. His retirement proved precarious last time. I was partly to blame. I will not risk involving him again. If he needs me, he can call.”

It was more Sam’s fault, Sam knows that much. But Dean doesn’t want him to make up for it by staying away. He wouldn’t want Cas to, either, but Sam probably won’t be able to convince Cas of that. There’s a certain poetic justice to it. Dean makes stupid sacrifices all the time, protecting people. Sometimes he should get dosed with his own medicine. 

And perhaps Cas knows that he’s punishing Dean, too, staying away. Waiting for him to call, then pissy if he does. Family stuff. Sam can relate. 

“What about you?” Sam asks. “You ever want to give peace a chance? Stop being a soldier and do the angel equivalent of buying a seaside cottage and writing your memoirs?”

“I do not have that choice,” says Cas. “At least, I do not have the choice between war and peace. Only between war and chaos. And I won’t have chaos in heaven, whatever the alternative.”

“I don’t know, man,” says Sam. “War can be pretty fucking chaotic.”

“Freedom often seems to require coercion,” Cas says. “And order, war. Apparently that is not an exclusively human irony. I do what I must.”

“And you’re the only one who can do it?” says Sam. “Sorry, Cas, but I’ve heard that one before. I’ve _done_ that one before. It didn’t end well. Go for the seaside cottage.”

“As you have,” says Cas. 

“I’m not doing some _only I can do this_ thing,” says Sam. “Just hunting. Totally expendable. I’m not at risk of saving the world any more.” Only thing Sam’s still at risk of wrecking is Dean, and he won’t do that. He’ll put whatever he has to in place to not do that. “Anyway, you know I’m a lousy role model.”

“I am aware that you are a discouraging exemplum,” says Cas. “Or perhaps not, since you have survived. Since you have found a degree of salvation. I am not likely to do either, but if I do I will certainly consider the cottage. There are some quite pleasant ones in heavens I have visited.”

Well, nothing Sam can say is going to change Cas’s mind.

“I’ll read your memoirs, if you do,” he says. “Dean will, too. He’ll probably want his autographed. Just don’t get too full frontal with the sex scenes.”

“What would Dean think of the – sex scenes?” Cas asks, waving a hand from himself to Sam. They’re both bare-chested, still, though Sam has pulled on sweat pants and Cas has resumed his usual trousers.

Sam snorts.

“Me drinking tequila and fucking an angel?” he says. “Probably that it’s a step up the ladder, for me. He’s seen worse.” Then he runs the words over in his mind. 

“Sorry,” he says. “That was kind of a shitty thing to say. I, uh, I don’t think he’d mind, Cas.” 

Dean would be relieved, no doubt, that Sam has slipped right back into needing someone. And Sam’s relieved, too. He knows, coldly, that he’s OK with taking from Cas if it stops him draining Dean. 

“Ah,” says Cas. They lapse into silence. Sam turns the volume up. Somebody’s going to Emergency, somebody’s going to jail.

So it gets to be a thing. Sam’s never quite sure what kind of a thing it is, what’s in it for Cas. Apart from the Dean news, of course. It’s something Cas can do for Dean, maybe, from his self-imposed distance. Keep an eye on Sam, keep him from fucking things up. Or could be Cas just gets angry, or tired, or even bored, up there with the endless dregs and entrenchments of his war, and he needs a break, an outlet. Sam can do that, be a safety valve. That’s something he gets, intimately. Most likely, though, Cas is doing exactly what Sam is, seizing the thing he can get because he can’t have what he wants. 

Sam doesn’t ask. Cas doesn’t volunteer any confessions. Could be Sam’s wrong, and it’s not Dean for Cas after all. It might be someone else instead, or also. One of the friends Cas killed, Balthazar, or Rachel. Or maybe Cas took a leaf out of Sam’s own blotted copy book and fell for a demon. 

Sam calls Cas and he comes, most of the time. Whatever reasons he has are sufficient for that. 

 

_Sam’s twenty-three – what, it’s supposed to go in order? It doesn’t work like that -- Sam’s twenty-three and something almost happens. He thinks. He’s pretty sure._

_It’s been creeping back, ever since Jess. Since Dean was the only thing that didn’t stink of fire after Sam’s life burned. Since Dean’s been the only one who’s already in this, their fucking House of Usher curse, the only one Sam can catch hold of without dragging someone else in. Since Dean’s been there every night, snoring in the bed nearest the door, holding Sam’s head together with his hands after the visions. Since Dean has been the only barrier between Sam and being Max, being what’s his name, Ansem, Andy’s evil twin, between Sam and being whatever it is Gordon knows Sam’s going to become._

_And now Sam’s drunk off his ass in a hotel in Connecticut. A nice place. He and Dean don’t usually get to stay in the nice places. The room is turning in lurching circles, a ring of faces, the people Sam couldn’t save. But Dean is perfectly steady and Sam holds onto him as Dean pulls him up out of the chair, hauls him towards the bed. Sam holds onto Dean and makes him promise and Dean does._

_It’s a relief, a fucking weight off his shoulders and Sam’s drunk and Dean’s right there, right there. Sam grabs at Dean’s face. His hand catches on end-of-the day stubble, curving over Dean’s cheek, thumb stroking towards Dean’s mouth. They’re so close. Sam can smell Dean’s breath over the alcoholic fume of his own._

_But Sam’s drunk off his ass and Dean tips him over onto the mattress and nothing happens, though Sam can feel Dean’s eyes on him, hot on him as he flops on his stomach and plummets into sleep, pulled down safe by the sure weight of Dean’s promise._

_It wasn’t just Sam. That time, it wasn’t just him. Sam’s pretty sure._

_Dean breaks his promise. There are things he won’t do, even for Sam._

 

It’s more than a year before Sam tells Dean about Cas. And, yeah, Dean doesn’t mind. It’s not like he was going to feel betrayed or something, by either of them. That’s not why Sam put off telling him. It’s just, well, supernatural beings, sex, Sam. Dean has historically had problems with that combination, and Sam can’t say he’s not justified. It’s not like Sam can explain it to Dean, not without revealing all the wrong things. Small helping of truth, giant side of lie by omission, that’s the best this can go.

It comes out a few days before Dean and Lisa’s tiny, casual wedding. They’re sitting out in the backyard, the night Sam arrives, in a smell of cut grass and charcoal starter and steak. Just Dean and Sam. Lisa and Ben went out to dinner with Lisa’s sister. They’re both a bit buzzed. Dean is nervous and giddy and it’s weird, for a vertiginous moment Sam feels like he’s older, wiser, the steady one. 

Then Dean tells Sam why they’re making it official, why now, that Lisa’s pregnant. 

It’s a minor grace in Sam’s life that his first feeling is honestly joy, even if he’s just reflecting Dean. It could so easily have been something horrifying, hate or jealousy, one of Sam’s monsters. 

“That’s great, man,” he says. “For both of you. That’s really, really great. Congratulations. I mean it,” and he’s so happy to be happy that he’s giving Dean a big stupid grin. Dean grins back kind of shyly. His cheeks and the tips of his ears are pink and his eyes are bright and of course Sam’s treacherous gut twists a bit with desire. But it’s not bad, as these flare-ups go, just a wistful twinge. 

“So, Uncle Sam,” says Dean, and chuckles. Yeah, Dean’s going to latch onto that joke and never let go. Sam might as well get used to it. And maybe preemptively shave his sideburns. He drains the rest of his beer and sets the bottle down on the lawn.

“So, Daddy Dean,” he retorts. 

Dean flops back on the grass, face gone serious. “I want this, Sam,” he says. “You can’t even. But I’m shit scared. I mean, Ben, you know, Lisa raised him. He was a great kid, before I set eyes on him. But this, man. This is a whole new level of things I could screw up.”

“You won’t,” says Sam. “You’re pretty good at it, you know. The parent stuff. And there are two of you. If the kid’s lucky, maybe Lisa will counteract your shit taste in music.”

“My taste in music is awesome,” says Dean. “All the cool kids agree. You should see Ben’s iPod. The kid appreciates the classics.”

Sam groans theatrically. Dean hits him. They wrestle a bit, till Dean’s beer gets knocked over and Sam breaks away. He has to be careful, messing around with Dean. Dean gets a couple more beers from the cooler.

“What about you, Sammy?” he asks.

“What about me what?” says Sam.

“Is it just going to be you and the car and the road forever?”

“I guess,” says Sam. “I mean, saving people, hunting things. Do what you know, right?”

Dean looks dissatisfied.

“Well, she’s an awesome car,” he says. “It’s just, I thought you might want something else some day. Like you used to.”

Sam pulls up a few blades of grass.

“That was a long time ago,” he says. “I’m good. My life’s OK.” 

“You were a grand master at it, right from the get-go, wanting things,” says Dean reminiscently. “Man, you and ice cream trucks, when you were a little kid. You used to bawl your eyes out if I didn’t get you one of those bars with the fudge in them.”

Dean probably spent all his quarters on them, summer after summer. That’s the problem. Sam’s still a grand master. He still wants too much of Dean. He’s just forgotten how to want the other stuff, too. The ice cream and shit. He doesn’t say anything. Dean changes tack.

“You got anyone?”

“Do we have to go there?” says Sam. “I’m OK, Dean. My life is OK. I don’t need you to worry about me, or, like, try to set me up or something. You don’t have to keep taking care of me.”

“Jesus, Sam,” says Dean. “Don’t be so damn touchy. Who said anything about setting you up? I get it, you’re an adult. You’re free and independent. You don’t need me looking over your shoulder. Excuse me if I’d like to know my brother’s happy.” 

“I told you, I’m good,” says Sam. He sounds like a sullen sixteen-year-old. He sighs. “Sorry,” he says. “I, yes, there’s, well, sort of. Not really. Sort of. There’s sort of someone.”

Dean looks relieved. His mouth quirks. 

“Eloquent, Sam,” he says.

“I would have told you,” says Sam, “But . . .” Dean holds up a hand, stopping him.

“Hey, it’s cool,” he says. “Grown man, right? You don’t have to brief me or anything. I just, I don’t want you to be lonely, OK? Or, you know, turn into some withered, celibate husk, unable to make human contact without your better-looking brother to be your wingman.”

“Asshole,” says Sam automatically. “Look, it’s just, it’s awkward. Because of stuff. Because of who it is. Cas. I’ve kind of been seeing Cas.” Seeing, what a stupid euphemism.

“Cas,” says Dean blankly. “As in, Castiel? Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” says Sam. “Cas. I mean, uh, I know it’s weird. It could be weird for you. The angel thing. The Cas thing. The guy thing.” Not that Dean’s ever had a problem with that, but as far as Sam’s aware the only people Dean knows Sam’s been with were girls.

Dean shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “I kind of thought, you and your friend Brady. The way that demon talked about the two of you. I thought maybe there had been something. Shit. Sorry. Not a good thing to bring up. No, it’s not the guy thing. It’s just, _Cas_. I’m surprised, that’s all. You and Cas. I mean, I knew you still saw him sometimes, but I thought it was work stuff. Not some couple thing.”

“We’re not a couple,” says Sam. But Dean isn’t listening to him, just looking speculatively at his face.

“I guess I can see it,” he says, “How Cas might be good for you. How you guys might be good for each other.” Dean stretches out his bare, grass-stained foot and prods Sam’s calf with his toes. “I hope he’s treating you right, Sammy. I don’t want to have to come out of retirement and kick more angel ass or anything.” 

The real answers spill through Sam’s mind. _He ties me up. When I can’t stop thinking about fucking you, or about fucking Ruby. When I taste blood. When I remember how it felt to yank a demon out of its host and crush it. He’s strong enough to hold me back. Strong enough to stop me. And he would. If he had to, he would. The one thing you would never do for me._ That, more than sex. That’s what Cas gives Sam that Dean can’t. Yeah, his relationship with Cas is a real good topic for Sam to go over with Dean the week before Dean’s wedding.

“Yeah,” says Sam, “Yeah, I, it’s good. I rely on him a lot.” Which is also true. “Though he’s got some strange ideas when it comes to TV.” If Cas had been right about what was going on on _Lost_ , it would have been a much better show. Canceled first season, probably, but better.

“Don’t even tell me,” says Dean, “I don’t want to know.”

“You really don’t,” Sam agrees. 

“You should get him to come to the wedding,” says Dean. “We’ve got room for one more. Especially one who doesn’t have to eat.”

“Dude,” says Sam. “I’m not doing the wedding date thing with Cas.”

There’s a dangerous grin spreading on Dean’s face.

“Aw, come on, Sam,” he says. “You could slowdance. You could share a piece of wedding cake. Maybe you’ll catch the bouquet.”

“Dean,” says Sam warningly. Oh, God. His voice just squeaked, like when he was eleven and Dean was teasing him about his crush on Stephanie. But Dean’s back to serious.

“Truth is, I’d like it,” he says. “I’d like to see him. I know he was pissed with me, back then, and I sure as hell know I was pissed with him, but, shit, I haven’t seen him in years, and he’s my friend. He’s family. Quite apart from dating my kid brother.”

“I don’t think he’s pissed at you,” says Sam. There’s really no point correcting the whole dating thing. “Not anymore. It’s just, he’s still at war, even with Raphael gone. He doesn’t want to risk it, you getting involved. Not now that you’ve got something different.”

“Hope he’s not dragging you into anything,” says Dean. “I’d think you’d have had it up to here with heaven shit. There’s enough risk just hunting.”

“He’s not,” says Sam. “Believe me. It’s me calling him, most times, to help with stuff.” Another truth. Sam’s giving them out like candy. 

“Hmm,” says Dean, not quite convinced. “Well, I can’t say I don’t see his point, staying away. Can’t say I’m not a bit grateful. Lisa, Ben, the baby. Last thing I want is any heaven and hell stuff going down here. But it doesn’t mean we can’t ever set eyes on each other. Doesn’t mean I’m not his friend. Ask him, Sam. See if he’ll come.”

“I’ll ask,” says Sam.

“He’d be welcome,” says Dean. “Tell him that. Tell him Lisa would like to meet him.” 

And Cas does come. He brings an ancient artifact of obscure purpose and dubious decorative value, wrapped in heavy, beautiful paper. He shakes hands solemnly with Lisa and Ben. And after a moment of epic staring -- they look like two eighteenth-century guys squaring off for a duel -- he hugs Dean. Sam can see in Dean’s face that he’s moved. Cas, too, though he looks as impassive as ever.

Dean spends the rest of the evening trying to get Sam and Cas to dance. It’s a miracle, a genuine God-gives-a fuck-after-all miracle, that neither of them smites him.

 

It’s another miracle, though less divine mercy than statistical anomaly, that over that whole stretch of years after Dean leaves hunting Sam only gets really hurt once. He has the usual cuts he has to stitch, sprains that keep him off the road for a few days. Once there’s the intestinal flu from hell, and if he ends up crying on a motel bathroom floor and wanting DEAN with an intensity his sick incest passion has never attained, well, his memory is dim and shamed the next day and no one else needs to know. Once or twice he goes to a clinic with an infection or a dislocated shoulder he can’t put back in place by himself, but those are routine. 

There is the time, a few months after the wedding, when an ugly little lake monster – more like an overgrown dog than Nessie – chews on his right arm before he can cut off its three heads. He’s not too far from Sioux Falls, so he stays a few weeks with Bobby. Lisa’s almost eight months pregnant, it’s a bad time to impose on Dean. Anyway, Sam’s been meaning to get Bobby to teach him Japanese, ever since he nearly got killed, dealing with a Mannen-dake in San Francisco. This seems like a good opportunity to start. 

It’s peaceful, that convalescent stretch in the deepening cold of South Dakota winter. Sam’s not Dean, he can’t match Bobby shot for shot or remember the family he lost right at the start of the whole hunting thing. He can’t need something so close to what Bobby has to give. Still, watching Bobby in his pig hat, wielding a bamboo brush, showing Sam the first few characters, Sam feels an easy mixture of affection and amusement and respect he only wishes he could have felt, growing up and after, for Dad. 

He sends Dean pictures of Bobby in professor mode, and of his own first attempts at calligraphy. Dean’s _U in2 squid porn, Sammy?_ in response is uncalled for. Sam’s handicapped, working with his left hand. After the torn flesh heals Sam heads out to address a boitatá in Massachusetts, but he stops off at Singer Salvage more often from then on, and not only because Japanese 101 doesn’t benefit from months of neglect between sessions. 

But Sam drove himself to Bobby’s, that time. No losing track, no blank time when it might have been the end.

He wakes in a glare of lights. There’s a bustle of flat voices exchanging data, and the light grows and shrinks in a sick, unsteady pulse. Sam tries to sit up and bone grates somewhere, he can’t tell where, the light is too blinding. The voices start yammering “Sir, sir” and he closes his eyes and makes them go away.

He wakes again in a dim blank room with a screen by his bed. Hospital. He’d know that smell anywhere. His head hurts, a crushing slab of pain. He should get someone to call Dean. He reaches for his phone but he’s wearing a hospital gown. He’ll get up in a minute and find his jeans.

When he wakes up next Dean is there, sitting by the bed, wearing a blue sweater. Dean never used to wear sweaters. 

“You awake there, Sam?” he says.

“Mmmm,” says Sam. “You never used to wear sweaters.”

“I’m daring and unpredictable,” says Dean.

“Mmmmm,” says Sam again. He tugs Dean’s arm down onto the thin pillow and leans his forehead on it, because his head is still throbbing nauseatingly, and he’s in a hospital, Dean probably feels sorry for him right now. 

“What happened?” he asks. He can feel Dean shrug.

“You tell me,” he says. “Your leg is broken in two places and you bashed out a few more of your brains. They don’t know who brought you in, so probably Cas, not a posse of grateful villagers.” 

Cas isn’t allowed to heal them or bring them back – some treaty with lots of careful clauses he’s got with Death – but he bends the rules a little bit sometimes.

“It’s never a posse of grateful villagers,” says Sam.

“No,” agrees Dean. “So what was it, the whatever?”

Sam is breathing wool and a trace of cedar and underlying Dean. He doesn’t want to go back and try to remember the hunt. Whatever it was, it has nothing to do with this.

“Dunno,” he says, muffled against Dean’s arm, “Garden gnomes, maybe. Nasty little fuckers.” 

Dean snorts. Memory drifts back, vaguely, a dusty room with shrouded furniture, hovering anger. 

“A poltergeist, I think,” Sam adds more plausibly. “’S a nice sweater.”

“I guess they’ve got you on the good stuff,” says Dean. He sounds amused. “Don’t suppose you feel like giving me my arm back.” 

Sam doesn’t answer. It’s better than the drugs, this equilibrium, these moments when he needs less and Dean can give more, without it all toppling over. 

“You staying here?” he asks. Dean’s got the two kids now, baby daughter and teenaged stepson. He doesn’t like to be away from home. Sam can’t even remember where he is right now, how many miles from Battle Creek. His mental log has been wiped by the drugs.

“A few days,” Dean promises, “Then I’m dragging your sorry ass back home with me.” 

Sam can hear it already in his voice, the hope that this will be when Sam gets out, that maybe his leg will slow him down, make him see that he has to stop. But it’s no good. Sam settles in for a while, an awkward squatter on the edges of the household. Plays with Sally – she’s one and a bit already -- gets some sources for Ben for this history project he’s doing on Carthage. But his leg heals straight and true, and the walls of Dean and Lisa’s guest room are too thin. In the end Sam gives in, jerks off on their clean sheets to Lisa’s moans and Dean’s grunts. He mops up the stain as best he can, heads out with a hasty, damaging goodbye the next day. Stops fifty miles down the road at a no-tell motel and prays to Castiel.

 

Sam strips, methodically, while he’s waiting to see if Cas’ll show – he doesn’t always, sometimes he can’t get away. He folds his clothes and stacks them neatly on the chair. The room is overheated. Naked, Sam feels more at home in it, though he’s jumpy in his own skin. He brought in the ropes from the car. He picks one up, loops the smooth, cool nylon experimentally around his wrist. Want kicks him in the gut, breath catching, blood rushing south. But he unwraps the rope after the briefest instant of contact, coils it again it and sets it aside. This doesn’t work when he does it himself.

Cas would find much of the elaborate paraphernalia humans have invented for sex puzzling and maybe pointless, Sam suspects, but he seems OK with a few basics. Ropes, a belt. Sometimes a knife, when Sam needs to bleed so he won’t drink. Sam’s not sure Cas sees them as different, the nights they watch _Doctor Who_ and make out, the nights he ties Sam to the bed. Whether he registers the classics of sci fi as Sam trying to offer him something, some return. 

At least the two of them come out about even, as far as kinkiness goes. Sam may need to be restrained, like, literally, from fucking his brother, but he’s not the weirdo who prefers both Ten and Twelve to Eleven.

Cas arrives while Sam is still contemplating his Doctorial perversity. He takes in the coiled ropes on the nightstand immediately and gives Sam a curt nod. There’s no small talk on these nights, not until after. Not always then.

“Lie down, please,” Cas says, and Sam spreadeagles himself obediently on the bed. Cas always does this part slowly and carefully, and it’s not easy, because motel beds aren’t designed for bondage. They might even be intended to discourage it. Sam’s whole angelic incest prevention program would work better if he could afford classy B & Bs with fourposters. Still, Sam has long limbs, and Cas has mastered the trick of twisting the rope around the frame. 

As Cas works, Sam lets his mind go still and empty. He’s learned the discipline, when he has rope to remind him. The clutter of Dean’s house, the mesh of voices, the easy, unattainable warmth of it drain away from his thoughts. Then he can seal off the core, behind walls and cooling lakes and triple shielding, like a reactor. 

The energy’s still there, but it flows innocently now, contained, hardening his cock to a painful stiffness, flooding his mouth with saliva in preparation, in case Cas judges that dick down his throat is symbolically appropriate or nicely calculated to meet Sam’s needs or notorious in the old garrison for banishing thoughts of brother-fucking. Or something. Sam’s never figured out how Cas chooses, what part his own desires play in it. Maybe the exercise of unspoken, careful judgment is what he gets off on with Sam. Not that Cas always wants to get off, not in the strict sense.

“Do you require anything else?” Cas asks, when Sam’s arms and legs are drawn taut to the four corners. Sam shakes his head silently. It’s better when he doesn’t have to talk, to choke the lines of communication with requests. There’s a wire of stretched burn through each of his limbs, like a good workout, the point where he can lose himself, jogging. Except that he can’t move. He flexes his muscles and the rope cuts into wrists and ankles and he feels the deep flush flood over his chest and throat, his ribs rising and falling with his breathing.

Castiel sits on the bed. He isn’t taking off his clothes this time, not even his trenchcoat, but he’s pushed the coat sleeve up a bit and he’s unbuttoning the cuff of his white shirt, rolling it up neatly. He has lube in his pocket. He probably carries it everywhere now, efficiently, when he’s not a wavelength.

“Close your eyes,” he says. “You should come when I tell you to do so.” The darkness behind Sam’s lids is lit by florescent colored lines for a few moments, then fades to black.

Castiel’s finger, always a little cool, breaches Sam’s opening. Dean’s would be rougher, blunter, calloused from carpentry as it was from hunting, uneven nails catching. Cas’s nails are always smoothly filed and trimmed. Or maybe they don’t grow. Sam almost breaks his mini vow of silence to ask. But Cas’s quiet, perfectly steady breathing, Sam’s untouched cock and nipples, the unnipped skin of this throat and ears, his unkissed mouth, the expanse of his body with nothing touching it but the warm, steady draft of the central heating -- they’re all beginning to spiral down already, a whirlpool of deprivation tightly centered on the deep probe of Cas’s fingers, the single point of contact. Sam’s not getting cock tonight. This is it.

He stretches his head back till the tendons of his neck are pulled as painfully tight as his tied arms, as the fire down his thighs and calves, groans, then shouts. He never says a name, never, but as long as he doesn’t he can make noise, he can be as loud as he needs, he can bellow like a fucking bull, like one of those Greek gods who fucked and got fucked in animal form, the babel of dead language names drowning in pure sound. Except he’s being fucked by an angel. Finger-fucked by a fucking angel of the Lord, still-cool fingers nimble and precise, pressing on his prostate, stretching deep, scissoring into burn, gathering into a fist, intolerable fullness. 

Sweat pours off of Sam, the strong smell of it. It tickles and stings and he can’t swipe at it because his wrists are tied. When he tries, the discomfort of the bonds flares brightly into pain. Sam arches off the bed till it’s at all four points, a compass. He’s laid out on it like he has been in the panic room all those times, like that Da Vinci drawing, except the lines are pain.

It’s hard to hear when Cas says “You can come,” the blood is rushing so strong in Sam’s ears. But Castiel’s voice is incisive when he gives a command. Sam flashes to woolcedarDean from the hospital, pure sensory memory. He shoots white up his chest in a rush of comfort and shame, then goes limp, shuddering in the ropes.

It’s a long time before he can speak. 

“Thanks,” he says, when he can. “God, Cas. Thanks. Thanks.” 

Cas nods and unties Sam’s ankles, then his arms. Sam catches Cas’s wrist, his own hand swollen and reddened against the pale flesh and dark, wiry hairs of Cas’s. The hand that’s branded on Dean’s shoulder. The first time Cas rested his palm in that same place on Sam, Sam had come so hard he saw stars. Now he tugs the hand into position and closes his eyes again, just for a moment. Under the dense human sex smells Cas is a whiff of ozone. Cas’s other hand traces a drop of cooling sweat down Sam’s chest, his touch sure and delicate, like a scientist calibrating an instrument.

It’s a system of counterweights, Sam’s life. The part of himself that needs to hunt, that he needs for hunting. The part that can be in Dean’s house, that can do family, stay human. And this. An airlock, to cross from one to the other. He hopes it’s enough to keep both sides safe. To keep Dean safe. Dean, Lisa and Ben, and Sally.

 

So, yeah, Sally. Sam’s an uncle. It’s OK. He’s not a baby person, not really, but he gets along pretty well with her. But it’s not till she’s three and a half or so that it really kicks in, that it hits him. 

He’s in the ascendant that visit. He’s Sally’s favorite person ever. It’s partly because he can lift her up high, really high, carry her round the house, let her see the world near the ceiling. He gets in at five, a bit before dinner, and that’s basically his activity for the evening, except when they’re eating. 

Also, Dean and Lisa are tyrants. They’ve got strict laws about bedtime. When Sally tries for civil disobedience they carry her off by main strength. There’s crying, really fucking loud. Ben rolls his eyes and heads to his room with a put upon sigh to listen to something louder, but Sam is kind of impressed. The kid is screaming for an audience that can compare her performance with actual banshees, and she stacks up pretty well. And Sam’s not the one making her cry. He gets to be the innocent bystander.

Eventually things get quiet and Dean and Lisa come back down, looking tired. Sam brings out three beers. He’s telling Dean the latest on the Bobby and Jody Mills front – she’s keeping stuff at Bobby’s house now, it looks promising – when Sally reappears, fleecy pajamas and scared eyes.

“I had a bad dream,” she says.

“C’mere,” says Dean. Sally runs up to him and he picks her up. “You want to tell me, sweetheart?” he says. Sally leans against his shoulder.

“I had a balloon,” she says, “I had a balloon and it got away. And there was a man, and you asked him where my balloon was, and he said, he said ‘It’s down by the mattress that was killed yesterday.’” Sally hiccups. No one laughs. It sounds fucking terrifying to Sam. 

“It’s OK,” says Dean. “It’s OK. You’re awake now. You’re good. How about I come up and sit with you while you go back to sleep?”

“You and Mommy,” says Sally. “And you can read me stories. And play games.” She’s perked right up and there’s a speculative gleam in her eyes. Resilient kid, leveraging like that.

“One story,” says Lisa, “Or one game. A quiet one. Daddy or me but not both.”

“Uncle Sam,” says Sally decisively. She picks him out as surely as Dean used to find the right mark at every bar, back when they hustled pool.

“Uncle Sam’s tired, kiddo,” says Dean, “He just got here. How about you make do with Daddy tonight, and maybe Uncle Sam will take you to the park tomorrow.”

“It’s all right,” says Sam. “I don’t mind.” Not that he has the faintest idea how to get Sally to go back to sleep if she doesn’t want to. But Sally asks for things. Something that Dean does once in a blue moon, something that costs him, and his kid does it like it’s nothing. Sam has a hard time saying no.

“Fair enough,” says Dean, settling back against the couch with a faint grunt. He gets stiff after a day on the job, too many old injuries. “The thing where the kid’s some kind of prodigy crack lawyer’s probably your fault anyway.”

“Hey,” says Sam mildly. 

“Say thank you to Uncle Sam,” says Lisa, taking Sally from Dean and passing her over. But Sally just gives him a long stare, like she’s assessing his qualifications. 

“We’re going to my room,” she announces. Sam carries her upstairs.

The quiet game of choice seems to be some form of inventory. Sam sits cross-legged on the rag rug while Sally brings him a selection of objects to inspect. She has a small forest of plastic trees with, like, rope ladders and treehouses in them. They’re pretty neat. There’s a wooden horse, looks like it comes from some unrelated farm thing, caught in the branches of one.

“Hmm,” says Sam. “You’ve got a horse up a tree there.”

Sally touches the little wooden horse, but it’s firmly wedged in the tree’s rubbery foliage, it doesn’t fall.

“Horses don’t live in trees,” she says severely. 

“Maybe there’s a special kind of tree-climbing horse,” Sam suggests. If there is, it probably eats people.

“Tree-climbing horses,” Sally repeats thoughtfully. She sounds skeptical, like Dean might if Sam suggested the monster was a wendigo when it was obviously a werewolf. She disentangles the horse and moves it down a couple of branches.

“They eat the flowers,” she decides. OK, that’s a better idea than Sam’s.

The tree’s little pink flowers are detachable, like the leaves. Sam moves a couple of them to the twigs nearer the horse. Sally pokes the horse’s nose at them and makes loud, satisfied smacking noises. Sam recognizes that, too. Dean with a really good cheeseburger.

“What do they do when it’s not spring any more and there aren’t flowers?” he asks. She’s probably got some formidable problem-solving skills.

“They fly south,” she says. “It’s warm and there’s millions of flowers. Birds fly south. We learned it in daycare.”

“Maybe the bed is south,” Sam suggests. “I’m seeing some flowers there. I bet the tree-climbing horse would like to eat them.” Sally’s quilt and sheets have daisies on them.

Sally grabs the horse and jumps onto the bed with an alarming squeak of springs. 

“He flew!” she shouts.

“You should lie down,” says Sam, “And I’ll spread the quilt out so the horse can graze.”

Sally lies down and keeps a supervisory eye on Sam while he moves the horse from daisy to daisy, making Dean-meets-cheeseburger noises. Sally seems satisfied. She closes her eyes.

“We used to go south in winter a lot,” says Sam. “Your Daddy and I. You’re right, there were lots of flowers. There were these little greeny white ones on some trees in Baton Rouge. I never found out what they were. They smelled good.” Pity about the evil dryad.

Sally opens her eyes again, but only halfway.

“Uncle Sam?” she says

Sam twitches a little. “Yeah?” he says.

“We could fly south. You and me and Mommy and Daddy and Ben and the tree-climbing horse.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” says Sam. Huh. Awkward family migration. “If you go to sleep now it will be tomorrow when you wake up and you can ask Mommy and Daddy about that.” There’s a botanical garden with a conservatory in Kalamazoo. Maybe they could go there. Show Sally some palm trees.

“Okay,” says Sally. Her eyes are closed again. “The horse is going to sleep, too,” she says.

Sam makes a horsey snoring noise. Sally’s asleep. 

Sam waits a bit, then pulls the quilt a little higher and puts the horse on the table by the bed. He stands up cautiously and watches Sally for a minute. She has Lisa’s dark hair, but she sleeps with a frown of concentration, exactly like Dean. Tucked away from all the things no one had saved Dean from.

Sam’s her uncle, and he’s in love with her father. He hosted the devil. He’d almost wrecked the world before she’d had a chance to be born in it. He’s everything she should never know about.

“Sorry,” he says meaninglessly. It seems wretchedly inadequate. He turns out the lamp and heads back down to the living room. The TV is on, volume low. Sam’s half-finished beer is still on the coffee table.

“I was about to send out search parties,” says Dean.

“Took me a while to bore her to sleep with my sparkling conversation,” says Sam.

“She likes you,” says Lisa. Sam feels inexplicably embarrassed.

“I’m the tallest person she knows,” he says, “I’m just, like, an amusement park ride to her.”

“Yeah, Sammy, I’m sure that’s it,” says Dean, and his voice is so fucking kind that for an irrational, panicked moment Sam thinks _he knows_. But Lisa’s smiling at him, too. He ducks his head, avoiding their eyes, and takes a slug of his beer. It’s lukewarm. 

“Must suck for her,” he says, “Having a midget for a father.” Dean kicks his ankle.

 

Sam doesn’t do nightmares much any more, himself, not the straightforward kind with invisible jaws tearing at Dean or Jess in flames on the ceiling. Sometimes he dreams of falling. That one he gets. And sometimes he walks through a maze of empty corridors, past endless white walls, and wakes sweaty and shaking, his brain poking at the blankness that holds the Cage. But for a week or two after that visit his subconscious abandons all attempts at subtlety. Scorch marks on the ceiling, blood dripping onto Sally’s bed, his own footprints smudged rusty red-brown on Dean’s stairs, the front door hanging open. 

So Sam stops visiting.

Dean yells at him, of course. He still does the hurt-worried-furious combo better than anyone. But Sam’s stubborn. He’s not ditching his family or being a martyr or a hermit or any of the things Dean throws at him, but Dean, he knows the risks. Even Lisa and Ben, in a way, they signed themselves up for it when they asked Dean to stay. Not Sally. If something followed Sam, if something got to Dean’s house, if Sam . . . she’s three. Even Dean got to be safe at three. Sam’s better off staying away from houses.

 

Cas yells at him, too. That comes as more of a surprise. Cas isn’t under any illusions, after all, that Sam isn’t dangerous. 

Sam’s coming out of the office at the River View Inn when he spots Cas standing by the car. Sam never asked him to take Crowley’s homing beacon out. It’s saved his ass a couple of times. And it’s reassuring, knowing it’s there. One day his ass won’t get saved. Dean and Cas may need to find his body, and it’s likely the bones won’t end up too far from the car.

“I do not see any river,” Cas says as Sam approaches.

“It’s probably paved under the parking lot,” Sam suggests.

Castiel frowns down at the asphalt.

“It is not,” he says, “If that were the case, I would be able to sense it.”

“We’ve been sleeping together four years and you never told me you could dowse?” says Sam. “I’m hurt, Cas.”

“I apologize,” says Cas. “The subject never seemed relevant to our sexual interactions.”

“That was a joke,” says Sam. “You don’t have to share your dowsing skills. Though it’s kind of cool. What brings you to the Interstate View Inn?” It’s not that Cas never just shows up, but usually it’s Sam who calls.

“Dean called me,” says Cas. Sam freezes halfway through closing the trunk, then shuts it with a careful snick instead of a casual slam.

“Dean,” _set you on me_ “Sent you?” he asks. OK, well played, Dean, because now Sam is going to have to go back to Battle Creek after all to kill him.

“Not exactly,” says Cas. “I did not respond to his prayer. I have not seen him. I felt I should speak to you. But he made me aware of the situation between you. He is distressed. And angry.” 

“Cas,” says Sam, “No offense, and I appreciate the talking to me instead of about me thing, really. But this is between me and Dean. It’s not your problem. Dean had no fucking business trying to get you involved.”

“May I come in?” Cas asks instead of answering. Sam nods brusquely and slides the key card into the lock. Having a spat with his angelic not-really-boyfriend in the motel parking lot is something he wants to avoid.

They go into the room in silence. Sam sets his duffel on the bed and strips off his jacket. Then he turns to Cas. Cas is standing like a statue, waiting, somehow managing to crowd into Sam’s space without moving an inch. 

“It is my problem,” he says. Resuming the conversation where they’d left off. 

“It’s really not,” says Sam. Sometimes Cas’s obdurate fixations drive him round the fucking bend. The way he’s looking at Sam with utter, patient conviction. It’s enough that Sam has to keep up his defenses against Dean. He doesn’t need Cas to bore into his resolve with goddamn angel willpower laser beams. Not Cas, who should fucking know why Sam’s doing this, Cas, who should be holding him back. Cas isn’t a sentimentalist. He’s not Dean.

“You and Dean are my business. Historically, dissension between you has damaged more than yourselves.”

“That’s bullshit, Cas,” says Sam. “This is a difference of opinion, not some apocalyptic standoff. We aren’t even fighting, really.” Just disagreeing, repeatedly, with occasional hurt and anger. It’s different. “And you of all people must know I’m right on this one. You know what could happen. You know better than I do. I wrecked Dean’s family once before, remember? Not that _I_ can. Remember, that is. Safe behind the fucking Wall with the rest of my soulless spree.”

The implicit accusation hangs in the air. Sam’s willing to fight dirty when he’s wrestling with an angel. But Cas’s gaze is unwavering.

“I have gone to considerable effort to prevent that history from repeating itself,” he says, “To repair whatever mistakes I made. I have kept away from Dean. I have done what I could to ensure that you need not keep away. And I have fended off heaven from both of you. I do all this for Dean, and for you. You owe me some return. You will fix this.”

Sam feels a surge of familiar, overwhelming frustration.

“I swear to God, Cas, sometimes you are just like him,” he says. “That _all the sacrifices are belong to you_ crap. You stay oh so nobly away so you don’t bring shit down on Dean, on his family, and you’re telling me I fucking owe it to you to run that risk, to make them run that risk? Because I’m how you get your vicarious Dean kicks?” He’s never said that out loud before, put it out there.

Cas’s eyes narrow dangerously. Oh, yeah, that hit home.

“You are treading a line,” he says. “Boy. I suggest you walk carefully.”

But Sam is buoyed up and reckless now. The warning flares in his guts like he’s swallowed a coal. He takes a step closer, a crackling inch or so of space between them. Cas could throw him across the room, easy. But Sam’s taller. He fists a hand in the everlasting trenchcoat, leans in.

“Or maybe I don’t fucking owe it to you. Maybe I owe you for the fucking. Is that it? Is this the rate you’ve been charging me all this time?” 

Cas breaks Sam’s hold on his coat with a casual, contemptuous twist of his wrist and steps back. 

“If that is how you choose to see it,” he says. “I have done you a service. I repaid my own obligations. I thought you found it uncomfortable to be in debt.”

“This isn’t about me and you,” says Sam. “This isn’t about some goddamn debt. It’s about me and Dean. It’s about keeping Dean’s family safe, keeping his kid safe. I can’t fucking believe you’re letting Dean stick you in the middle of it.”

“In the middle of it is exactly where I am. That is where _you_ have chosen to put me. It is where I have chosen to be. You wished to use this, to use me, so that you could have Dean. So do so. Make it work.”

There’s a hard edge here, something Sam recognizes, desire like a knife pressed against his pulse. Sam’s used Cas oh, yes. But Cas has used him, too. And they want that. They both want it. Whatever they’re grasping at through each other, keeping each other from, they also want this.

Sam moves in again and now it’s not from the urge to shake Cas, to smash his complacent assumptions. Cas is flushed, breathing fast, cock tenting his somber Jimmy trousers. Sam doesn’t usually have that kind of power, to get an unchosen response out of Castiel, to see it. He could let the rush go to his head. He could get used to it. Even if it’s dangerous, if it breaks down the dam. His hands fasten in Cas’s coat again and this time Cas doesn’t break away. 

“You don’t give me orders,” says Sam, testing.

Which is blatantly false. _Lie down. Your wrist here. Not yet, Sam. Faster. Now._ Sam has been letting Castiel give him orders for years, has let himself want it, let the twist of submission get hold of him, become essential. But Cas isn’t in control of what Sam does with it. He can’t meddle directly with what’s between Sam and Dean, not and get away with it. He gets to have control, helps Sam keep control, because Sam needs him for that. But it’s Sam who decides if he goes back or stays away. 

“Very well,” says Cas, “I am making a request, then. I am asking you.” His hands come up and grip Sam’s wrists, not pushing him away or pinioning him, just holding him in place.

That isn’t the response Sam was going for. He’s thrown, like he’s been caught out by one of those martial arts moves where giving way is an offensive weapon. Except this isn’t any kind of a trick. Cas bamboozled Sam and Dean both for months, but he’s never been anything but honest with Sam in this. They’ve never lied to each other with sex. If Cas is asking for something from Sam, he means it.

They sway together, both hard and panting, eyes locked, Castiel’s gaze a sincere supplication. 

“Please,” he says deliberately. 

And Sam is suddenly furious, a flash of ugly, irrational betrayal mixing with rebellion. If Cas has no right to give him orders on this, he has less right to resort to some goddamn emotional blackmail, to weakness, to needing. Sam has enough trouble dealing with his own damn need. 

He pushes Cas away. Cas doesn’t let go. They stumble into the nightstand and it goes over with a crash. Fucking flimsy motel furniture. Cas gets his balance back and shoves Sam in turn. He’s not exactly using his full strength, nowhere close, but Sam goes down hard, dragging the hideous bedspread off the bed with an abortive clutch. He jerks Cas down on top of him, knees at him, rolls them over, kneels above him. Cas glares up, chest heaving. 

“What the fuck is your _deal_?” Sam says.

Cas strikes out, a calculated blow that sends Sam sprawling. Then Cas is on him with a snarl, tearing at his clothes, biting across his chest. Sam grunts and grapples with Cas’s belt, with the soft grey wool of his trousers. Cas yanks Sam’s jeans down, and yeah, Sam’s responding to the manhandling like Pavlov’s fucking dog, precome blurting out as Cas’s eyes go dark, as his tongue comes out to wet his lips, but Sam’s not the only one. Cas’s cock is iron hard, flushed dark, damp at the head, veins standing out. When he lowers himself to rock sharply against Sam, Sam can feel him shuddering.

Sam levers up against Cas’s weight. Whatever’s got Cas so far off balance has tipped Sam over as well. He wants to roll Cas, fuck the living daylights out of him, get him to crack, since he already has, since he’s already given way on Sam. Maybe Sam can get him to take it back, reclaim control, his, Sam’s. Maybe he’ll spill what the fuck it is he wants. But Cas’s hand arrests him, comes up fast and hard to press against Sam’s throat.

“Damn it, Cas,” says Sam, and Cas’s hold tightens till Sam’s breath chokes. 

“Stay still,” says Cas, “Damn you, stay still. Do what you’re told.” He tangles his legs over Sam’s, holding him in place, keeping the pressure on his throat while he rides the groove of Sam’s hip.

Sam is pinned, overmastered, struggling for air, but he’s still winning, he’s won this, though fuck knows what he’s supposed to do with the victory. For the first time he’s seeing Castiel lose control, rutting against him in a broken rhythm, harsh moans wrenching at him like sobs. There’s a remote possibility that it will be the last thing Sam sees. Cas’s grip on his airway is convulsive. Dark, sparkling whorls invade Sam’s vision. But his body isn’t panicking, heavy and pliant under Cas’s ragged thrusts. Somewhere at the instinctive core he trusts Cas. He reaches up, slowly, concentrating, and brushes his fingers against Cas’s shoulder, the barest touch.

Cas’s face distorts. He ducks his head, bites down on Sam’s neck so hard that the pain registers through the black pressure in Sam’s chest, and comes, a hot, furious splash against Sam’s skin. His hand on Sam’s throat loosens as abruptly as if the tendons have been cut. Sam draws grateful, wheezing breaths. Gradually the blood stops thudding in his ears. Cas is still, now, watching Sam’s face. There’s a taut silence under the sound of their breathing.

“In the time since you raised Lucifer,” Cas says conversationally, at last, “I have killed three hundred and forty angels with my own hands. Three hundred and forty of my brothers and sisters. And heaven is still at war. I have accomplished nothing. That is my deal.”

 _Sorry?_ Is Sam supposed to be apologizing for that laden _non sequitur_?

“I don’t know what the hell you want,” he says, his voice feeble and raw. “If you need help, if there’s something I can do, if there’s something I should be doing for you, just ask.” 

Like Cas will ever hand him that kind of power. No, what Cas wants out of him is about Sam’s weakness, about what Sam can’t give, about Dean.

Cas slides his hand down towards Sam’s cock, almost absently, begins to jerk him off, running his thumb over the slit, pulling with the strong, expert grip Sam has surrendered to a hundred times. Sam’s surprised to find he’s still hard, still eager, thrusting into Cas’s hand. His mind’s been a little distracted, but apparently his body hasn’t lost track.

“I am not asking you to help me,” Cas says, biting off his words. “I am not asking you to do anything for me. Only to avoid botching your own affairs. To get this one thing right. To make this one thing work. You stupid, obstinate boy.” 

He’s jacking Sam emphatically at every phrase, working him hard, faster, painful friction dragging him roughly over the edge. Sam bares his teeth, twists his hand in Cas’s hair, grappling him close.

“No,” he says into Cas’s ear, pure stubbornness, and comes in long pulses over Cas’s fist. Cas’s hand goes gentle, stroking him through the aftershocks. Sam lets go and slumps back against the floor. His face is scalding, like he’s been running in hot sun.

They weren’t even fighting over who gets to have Dean. They were fighting over who gets to not have Dean. Or something. Or over Sam letting the devil out and fucking up heaven with civil war. Some combination. Fucking ridiculous. 

Sam lifts his head cautiously, wincing at the sting of sweat in the bites scattered across his chest and neck. Cas is half beside him, half on top of him, hair spiked on one side and flattened to his head on the other. His face is shuttered, eyes closed, but at Sam’s movement he opens them and stares at Sam with his old inscrutable intensity. Sam shifts his arm out from under him before it can fall asleep. There’s a ray of orange sun coming through the curtains, dust motes roiling slowly through it. It must be evening.

“Truce?” Sam says. His voice is only a little husky now. “Look, uh. I don’t even know what just happened there. Guess we overreacted or something.” Which is some kind of bizarre – not understatement, exactly. Misstatement, more like. “Both of us. Are we good?” It feels weird to be asking Cas that. 

“I value our friendship,” says Cas gravely. 

Something about that, when he’s sprawled on the floor, bruised and bitten and choked and spattered with come, when Cas is sporting the worst bedhead in the history of ever, something about that cracks Sam the fuck up. He laughs till he’s wheezing again. 

Cas waits him out.

“Thanks,” Sam says, when he can talk. “I do, too.”

“You’re welcome,” says Cas. “Will you speak to Dean?”

So much for truce.

“I speak to Dean all the time,” says Sam. “I’m not about to stop speaking to Dean. I won’t visit him at home, is all. I won’t get my life tangled up in what he’s got there. I won’t take my job” _myself_ “where his kid is.”

“Dean will not accept a compromise,” says Cas. “He won’t have you as other than his family. He won’t have his family other than whole. He doesn’t like things separated into parts. I have learned that.”

It grates on Sam, Castiel laying down the Dean law for him, even if Cas is right. Sam was intimately familiar, long before Cas, with Dean’s compulsive need to keep things glued together. A drive that sometimes chafes as intolerably as Cas’s own newfound obsession with fixing Sam and Dean in the places he’s assigned. With commanding Winchesters, since Thrones and Dominations have proved recalcitrant.

But that’s not fair, that’s not all of it. This isn’t just Cas trying to get his will done on earth as it won’t be in heaven. Under his imperious _do as you’re told_ there’s something that reminds Sam absurdly of Dean, younger than Sam ever knew him, in his sad little corner of heaven. He looks like a kid whose parents are fighting. Or like a cat, wondering why the humans won’t let him contribute. Wanting to keep dragging Sam back to set down on Dean’s doorstep, wanting to be thanked. 

OK, that image would have gone better if Sam hadn’t cast himself as a dead mouse. 

But it’s a dick move, when Sam has been coming and going in Dean’s home, getting enough of what he needs, to snarl at Cas’s quixotic dictates. That Dean be happy in the house Cas never visits. That Sam do whatever is required for that. Sam can’t do what Cas wants. He won’t bring the stink of blood and smoke from his dreams back under Dean’s roof, into Sally’s house. But he doesn’t have to be an asshole about it.

“I won’t let things get messed up with Dean,” he says. “I promise.”

“That is not a promise you can make,” says Cas. He sighs, an exasperated, human sound. “Perhaps I should not have intervened. But you are wrong. You are still arrogant. You seek to have things on your own terms.”

Cas is one to talk. But he hasn’t drawn away from Sam. Sam can feel the steady beat of his heart, the hold and release of breath and the vibration in his chest as he speaks. There’s something intimate and equal and OK about fighting like this, tangled and mussed on the floor and getting nowhere.

“I’m right,” Sam says. “Cas, you know I’m right.”

“You are wrong,” says Cas. “And you will not stay away. You did not, even when you lacked your soul. But I will leave it to Dean to convince you. I will let the matter alone.”

“Good enough,” says Sam. He’s ready to stop thinking about it for a bit. The stupidest thing about the whole crazy business is that he’s not clear what the hell Cas thought he’d been going to do about it anyway. Zap Sam into Dean’s basement and tie him down? Possibly. Sam doesn’t even want to know.

He hauls himself up off the floor and glances around at the room. It looks like a small tornado hit it. 

“We kind of trashed this place,” he says.

“None of the items are damaged,” says Cas. The lamp from the nightstand is lying beside him. He sets it upright. “I can put things to rights. You will wish to wash. And perhaps to order one of your pizzas with artichokes, and find the next work by the man you admire so much, the one who is misinformed about vampires.”

Sam may not be a master of interpersonal relationships, especially these days, but he has considerable expertise in oblique reconciliations and unspoken apologies.

“You do that,” he tells Cas. “Restore order. Call the pizza place yourself while you’re at it. Earn your Whedon. You wished to use me for my mad Netflix skillz, so do so. Make it work.” Sam wonders if it’s too risky, throwing Castiel’s words back at him like that, making light of them.

“I have never observed that any skills were required,” says Cas. He’s smiling slightly. 

“Well, no,” Sam concedes, “But I’m the one putting twenty-five bucks a month on a fake credit card so you can start in on _Firefly_. Gratitude would be nice.” He pulls clean jeans and boxers out of his duffel, extracts a twenty from his wallet and hands it to Cas.

“For the pizza,” he says, and shuts the bathroom door firmly in Cas’s face. By the time he comes out Cas and the room are spotless and the air smells of hot cheese and garlic. 

Sam’s seen the _Firefly_ pilot a hundred times. He still loves it, the deep space silence surrounding that first scene after the battlefield. But today he’s not giving it his full attention. He keeps glancing surreptitiously at Castiel, relaxed and attentive, watching with the same pleased curiosity he also bestows on porn and infomercials. He’s in shirtsleeves, collar open. He always looks naked like this, without the coat. Vulnerable and unshelled, much more so than when he’s stripped to the skin. Sam can see the notch of his collarbone, and the pulse beating in his neck. 

Sam knows from the inside what an angel’s essence is like, the roaring, scouring whiteout of power this empty vessel conceals. Cas isn’t Lucifer, of course. But Sam wonders if he’d be able to feel lust or fondness or concern for this being if he’d ever really seen him unshelled. 

But that’s the wrong way round. It’s the superpowered angel who’s baffled by the exhaustion of an endless war, by the frustration of not being able to impose order on a few human lives, to make at least a paltry corner of peace. And, well, there’d been a time when Dean had been all-powerful to Sam. Sam can still recall how Dean had looked to him when he was four or five. It had taken Sam a long time, far too long, to see the intricate pattern of cracks running under Dean’s surface. Far too long before he learned to try -- at least try -- to be careful. Even the part of Sam that’s still dazzled and demanding knows now that he needs to take care. In the end he’s responsible: going back, staying away, keeping some impossible middle distance.

Sam pauses on Wash’s face. Reaches out, thumbs the line of Cas’s cheekbone. 

“The man with the dinosaurs is amusing,” says Cas, mildly reproachful, eyes still on the stopped screen. 

Well, that decides it. Sam shuts the laptop and sets it aside. He’s saving Cas a world of heartbreak. Postponing it, at least. Maybe he can use his mad Netflix skillz to ensure Cas never discovers that the damn movie exists. For the time being Sam rolls over and settles onto Cas, mouthing along his collarbone, undoing a few more small, mundane plastic buttons, combing his fingers through the dark hairs on his chest. When he looks up Cas has diverted his look of interested inquiry to Sam’s face.

“I thought I was to make use of your putative skills,” says Cas. “Or at least your financial investment.”

“Later,” says Sam. He kisses his way up Cas’s neck. He feels light, somehow, lying on top, trusting his weight to the rise and fall of Cas’s deep, calm breaths. 

He comes on Cas’s name. It takes a moment to realize that it’s the first time.

 

His mind drifts, afterwards.

“Cas?” he says after a bit, into the dimness. 

Angels don’t sleep; of course Cas is awake.

“Yes, Sam?” he says.

“Do you still find my voice grating?” One of the good things about Castiel is that he can be counted on to take the question as honest curiosity, not guilt-tripping or anything.

“It is not so noticeable now,” says Cas. “Heaven is no longer harmonious. There is less contrast than there used to be.”

“That sucks,” says Sam. Cas nods, his usual curt response to sympathy. “So, wait,” Sam goes on. “Did you actually have, like, angel choirs? Harps?”

“Human images are inaccurate,” says Cas. “But, yes, for many of my brothers and sisters music was important. Balthazar --,” a fraction of a pause, “You might not think it, but he had a fine voice. Of course, his choice of subject matter was often in doubtful taste.”

“No wonder he had it in for Celine Dion,” says Sam. Cas gives an acknowledging snort of amusement.

 

Sam calls Dean as soon as Cas leaves. Fighting with Dean is no fun, but at least it’s not as discombobulating as fighting with Cas.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he says when Dean picks up.

Dean doesn’t pretend not to know what Sam’s talking about. He sighs. 

“Yeah,” he says. “OK.”

“I mean it,” says Sam, just in case.

“All right, all right,” says Dean. “Look, yeah, I was out of line. I’m sure Cas has his own data on how you’re an obstinate, wrong-headed bitch. Probably doesn’t need me pointing it out to him. I, uh, hope I didn’t mess anything up between you guys.”

It’s Sam’s turn to sigh.

“No, you didn’t,” he says. “We’re OK. No thanks to you, jackass.”

There’s a brief, assessing silence from Dean. 

“You just had make-up sex, didn’t you?” he says.

“Dean,” says Sam, warningly. Though he kind of did. That and bizarre fight sex. Dean probably wouldn’t get that bit. For all his _I’m a killer_ bull, Dean is fundamentally a man of peace.

Dean’s smirking into the phone. Sam can hear him.

“Big brother’s always looking out for you, Sammy,” he says. “I scored you make-up sex. Angel make-up sex. You should send me a damn fruit basket. Or, you know, you could come visit. Bring it yourself.”

“Dean,” says Sam again, but this time it’s more plea than warning. “I just – look -- I can’t. It’s better this way. We don’t know what could happen. Something will. Something bad. Some shit always happens.”

“Some shit like my goddamn brother walking out on his family?” says Dean. “Yeah, I’d noticed that happens a lot. Kind of hoped we were past it now.”

Sam’s hand grips the phone so tight there’s an ominous squeak from the plastic.

“It’s not like that,” he says. “Fuck it, Dean, you know it’s not like that.”

There’s a muffled thud down the line, like Dean’s just thumped back against the wall in frustration.

“No,” he concedes. “I know you don’t mean it like that. I know you don’t think that’s what you’re doing. But it’s what it comes down to, Sam.”

“It’s what I’ve got to do,” says Sam. “I’m trying to not fuck things up.”

“Bang up job you’re doing,” says Dean. “Look, forget about it for now. You’re probably all brain-dead from the make-up sex. More of a waste of time than usual, talking sense to you. But I’m not giving up on this. I’m not letting you just go off. Fair warning.”

Sam’s throat aches.

“I know,” he says. “Bye, Dean.” Dean just grunts and hangs up. Sam sets the phone down on the dresser and sits on the mussed-by-angel-make-up-sex bed. He should really start in on the hunt. That’s what he’s supposed to be here for.

He makes the bed, first.

Cas is correct, of course. In the end Dean talks Sam over. Sam caves like a rotten pumpkin. Other factors intervene before time has time to prove Sam right.

 

Sam’s at a bar when Dean tracks him down. Amazing how these things come around. Can’t have been that hard, Sam never turns off his phone’s GPS these days. One of the small things he owes Dean, what with everything else he won’t do. Can’t. 

He doesn’t see Dean come in. He’s circling survived-bys in an obituary in the local rag – why in heaven’s name does this town print its newspaper on pink paper? – when the newspaper vanishes from his hand.

“Guy’s name was Algernon,” says Dean’s voice. “You’d think that would be enough bad luck for any one person, without the whole melting thing.” 

Dean settles next to Sam and smiles at the bartender. The look of a bad day that’s not over yet leaves her face. 

“I’ll have whatever he’s not having,” Dean tells her, pointing a contemptuous thumb at Sam’s innocuous beer. He gets some dark brew the color of coffee topped with creamy foam. It does look better than Sam’s. 

“So you’d better have melty Algernon cleared up by next week,” says Dean to Sam, “Cause you’re coming for Thanksgiving. If I have to truss you up like the turkey and throw you in the truck.”

“There’s this thing in New Mexico,” says Sam, though he can tell Bobby about it, Bobby will pass it on.

“Put Bobby on it,” says Dean, like he heard every word Sam was thinking. 

Sam stays stubbornly silent.

“Sally’s been asking when you’ll come back,” says Dean next. The bastard.

“Low, Dean,” says Sam. 

Dean takes a placid pull of his beer. “Told her you’ll be there for Thanksgiving Dinner without fail,” he says.

Sam looks at Dean in a kind of despair. Dean’s going to win. He won the minute he walked in the door. And he’s the one who will suffer for it. 

“Dean,” he says, “You know, better than anyone, that it’s not a good mix, hunting and family.” The Winchester family recipe. Worse than one of those salads that have, like, jello and ham and whipped cream in them.

“I haven’t asked you to stop, Sam,” says Dean seriously, and it’s true. “Not once. But you don’t get to stop doing family either.”

Sam clenches his fist on the bar. 

“Don’t you worry about her, Dean?” he asks. He doesn’t have to specify which her.

Dean’s face darkens. He picks up his beer again and swallows angrily, half what’s left, sets the glass down hard. 

“Sure I worry,” he says, “And, fuck you, Sam, for talking like this is on you, like you’ve got some kind of corner on this. I got a past could catch up with them, and it worries the shit out of me. But it’s not like it’s the only thing. I look at Sally, and I worry she’ll get meningitis, or that she’ll get hit by a car. That some sicko will snatch her off the school playground. At least ghosts and demons I know what precautions to take. Best I can do for the rest is make sure she’s got her family looking out for her. Which includes not letting her stubborn asshole uncle walk away.”

“You shouldn’t be letting her uncle walk in the door, Dean. Don’t you know how fucking stupid that is? What if I fall off the wagon, or mislay my goddamn soul again? What if Lucifer slips the Cage and comes home to roost?” 

What if Sam reaches out and touches that place right by Dean’s ear, where the first grey hairs glint against the lines of his skull?

Sam’s voice is climbing, and a couple of people turn and give them funny looks. Dean ignores the glances. He leans back against the wall, tilting his stool, and sighs.

“Look, Sam,” he says, “You go evil, I’ll poke you with a pointy stick. You don’t come for Thanksgiving, I’ll also poke you with a pointy stick. May I suggest you choose one of the many options that don’t end with you getting poked with a pointy stick?” 

Sam opens his mouth to argue some more, get Dean to take this fucking seriously. Dean doesn’t know how close it’s been, sometimes, how near the edge Sam is. How often there’s only a twist of rope to hold him back. But Dean lets his stool thunk forward decisively and wraps a hand around Sam’s wrist.

“Please,” he says. “It’s family, Sam. It’s us. You and me. I don’t want to fucking do it without you, OK? I’ll stock up on pointy sticks.”

And, yeah, there it is. The appeal Sam can’t refuse. Cas is right, anyway. Dean won’t accept his family split into parts. Sam can’t do that again, even if this time he means well. Not when Dean’s coming as close as either of them ever will to saying the stuff they don’t say. _I love you. I need you_.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll come for Thanksgiving. As a favor to you. Not because I think you could take me. Not even armed to the teeth with a pointy stick.”

Dean picks up a toothpick from the little glass on the bar and jabs it at Sam’s shoulder. The toothpick breaks. Sam wrestles the remaining stub out of Dean’s hand, the pad of Dean’s thumb brushing warm and calloused against his fingers. Sam’s breath catches. Fuck it. Fuck it always. He throws the broken toothpick to the floor. 

“I get it, Dean,” he says, “You’re the pointy stickmeister. Or you’re Buffy. Yeah, that’s it. You’re a tiny blonde woman.”

Dean refuses to rise to the bait, gives Sam a look somewhere between shrewd and sad, drains the last of his pint.

“Just so you know,” he says, “I worry about _you_ getting killed by monsters.” He raises a hand to the bartender, insists on paying the check. Sam trails him out to his truck. Dean claps him on the shoulder and climbs into the driver’s seat.

“Give Sally my love,” says Sam. “Sally and Lisa and Ben, I mean,” he adds hastily. Oh shit, Dean’s not going to like that little faux pas. But Dean’s eyes just crinkle with amusement.

“I’ll pass it on,” he says. He hesitates for a moment. “You _could_ stop, you know,” he says. “That’s one way you could cut the monster risk. Just, maybe think about it. You have got other stuff out there, Sammy.” He turns the key and drives off before Sam can answer.

 

And Sam does think about it. It’s not as though he hasn’t before. The thing is, his life works, the way he has it now. It’s not ideal or anything. There are risks. But it’s been six years and Sam hasn’t snacked on a demon, clawed down the Wall, pinned Dean to his Ikea couch and kissed him. If he did something that left more room in his head, he’s not sure what he’d do. Give himself a few more inches, he might take the fucking mile. 

And there’s Cas. Not just Cas being his firewall, the half-guilty reliance of knowing that. If that’s even what’s going on any more, if that’s still what’s next. Sam would miss him. They’ve got some _Firefly_ left; Sam’s been doling out the handful of episodes. He gets satisfaction from it, bringing one of the great unjust cancellations of all time to the attention of Heaven. If Sam retired, Cas would stay away, like he does from Dean. Like he does for Dean. 

Or maybe it’s just that hunting is what Sam knows and what he’s good at. And if he goes on there will be an end. He’s not ready to imagine not wanting that. Not that he’s trying to get himself killed. Sam’s talented at survival, and he uses his gifts. It’s not suicidal to know the odds. It’s not suicidal to take comfort in knowing the odds. It’s just one of his backups, a form of randomized insurance. Playing Russian Roulette with safety instead of danger. Even though he caved and went back for Thanksgiving, even if Cas’s knots slip, Sam still has a safety net. 

But Dean wants him to retire. Dean says he’s not asking, but he is. He’s been asking all along.

Sam’s still mulling the question over a couple months after Thanksgiving. He contemplates it in the back of his mind, the part that’s not taken up with hunts. He can’t decide. He still hasn’t come to any conclusion when a large, hairy thing blasts a tree down on him and renders the whole point moot. 

 

_Sam’s twenty-six. He loses Dean. In a parking lot. That’s happened before. This time is different. Not worse. Sam’s not going to be all melodramatic and pretend that losing Dean’s trust is worse than Dean being shot dead. Only more final, in a way._

_Well, maybe that is melodrama, right there, because it’s not final. Trust isn’t like that with them. It’s not like betrayal, boom, trust gone. It ebbs and exposes some ugly wreckage. It comes back gradually, advances, retreats. Returns. Maybe even hits a high water mark. But it’s final because now Sam knows._

_Oh, it’s not like he hasn’t realized, some time in the last decade, that he’s in love with his brother. Sam’s not stupid. He knew it when he drank blood, fucked Ruby, squeezed Dean’s throat. Being in love doesn’t make you good._

_But it’s different, it can be fact now, because Sam has lopped off the potential. Tossed it on the same bonfire as everything else he’s uprooted, slashed, or burned over the last year. That dangerous frisson of possibility, that chance that Dean -- that someday Dean -- that’s dead forever. Sam doesn’t have to put up the fences any more, the lies and deflections, not in his own head. He can let it sit there, foursquare and inconvenient as a great fucking crate in the center of his mind. The enormity of it, the place where it’s there. The place where it’s gone._

_It’s only himself Sam has to guard against now._

_Dean forgives Sam. Sam trusts that, mostly. They’re good. But they’ll never be what they weren’t. They’ll never be what they weren’t ever going to be._

 

The pain is a cliff edge, distant, off somewhere beyond crusted snow, branches, big grey clouds. Sam lies still for a while, looking up. The clouds break and drift and reform. A curl of smoke twists towards them. It’s annoying. He’s dying, there’s a motherfucking tree across his body, and he doesn’t even know what that thing was, the creature that’s killed him. At least he can add “fucking strong” and “lightning thrower” to the “big and ugly” that had been most of his lore on it before it crushed him under a goddamn tree. He’s not even sure what kind of tree it is. Some sort of conifer. 

Anyway, the brute has run off. Somebody else’s problem. Not his. Not Dean’s.

There’s warmth trickling down Sam’s chin, and he tastes the familiar iron tang of blood. He should call Dean. He reaches for his phone. His arm moves, but his fingers brush bark before they reach his pocket. 

Huh. Plan B. He’s got a plan B.

“Castiel,” is all it takes.

Cas takes in the situation immediately. He kneels beside Sam and feels his pulse as calmly as a doctor, then rests his hand for a moment against Sam’s jaw.

“I am sorry,” he says.

Sam tries to shrug. 

“Bound to happen,” he says, “Sooner or later.”

“I can remove the tree,” says Cas. “I believe it would be quicker, then.”

 _No_ jolts through Sam’s nerves, tries to tell his muscles to sit up. The world goes black and jagged. Cas’s hand is on his chest, pulling him back, holding him down. 

“Dean,” Sam says. It comes out with a bubble of blood.

“You wish me to bring him?” Cas asks. Sam nods, gathers breath.

“He’ll be at work. Site’s in Kalamazoo, not Battle Creek. West South Street and Burrows Road. Don’t take too long, OK?” 

Cas makes to stand, then pauses. He shrugs out of his trenchcoat, wads it carefully, slips it under Sam’s head. It makes more of a difference than you’d think, having his head out of the half-melted snow. 

“I will find him,” Cas says. “He will be here in time.” 

He claps Sam’s shoulder, awkward and gentle, a gesture imitated from Dean, nothing from any of the times Castiel’s hands have been on Sam’s body. Maybe Cas is bending the rules again, just a little, or maybe it’s the trenchcoat, but the pressure retreats from Sam’s lungs. He can wait. Not long, but long enough.

“Thanks,” he says. “Really. Thanks, Cas.” It feels like he’s said that a lot. 

He owes Cas a better goodbye, that’s for sure. But there’s only going to be time for one, and it’s Dean’s. Sam shuts his eyes. He’s not getting tunnels of light or a life review or anything, just the smell of raw wood and fire and snow and the stubborn will to hang on till he’s seen his brother. But then, he never had any big fanfare, dying, not that he can remember. 

Cas hasn’t left yet. Sam can feel his unspeaking shadow through his closed eyelids. He wants to tell him to hurry, but he can’t waste the words, and anyway, it would be ungracious.

“I’m sorry,” says Cas again, and then his presence flickers out. Sorry he’s not allowed to heal Sam, sorry they were never either of them what the other really wanted, sorry Sam made a mess of his life, though that was hardly Cas’s fault.

“It’s OK,” Sam thinks. Maybe Cas will hear, the way he hears prayers.

And it is, it’s all right, Sam’s OK with it. Six years of Dean tuning up the car for him, every time he stopped by. Cas tightening the ropes around Sam’s wrists, or watching curiously over his shoulder while he loaded his iPhone with apps. Sam had held Sally, when she was only three days old. She’d been weird and grublike and, frankly, he hadn’t seen the appeal. He’d been more caught up in how Dean looked when he looked at her, freaked out and competent and incandescent. Now, though -- dying in this leisurely way, thinking back on her scrunched, red, newborn face -- there’s a warm pulse of fondness. Dean’s daughter. She rides her tricycle like a maniac. Dean’s got his work cut out for him there. But it’s what Dean always wanted. Someone to love who wouldn’t fuck it up.

And now Sam will get a few minutes of Dean to himself, guilt free, for his last thing. Damage free. Oh, he’s leaving Dean an ocean of grief, no two ways about it, but it’s not going to destroy him, not this time. Sam’s not going to destroy him. They’re both safe, at last. Sam can have the whole weight of Dean’s attention, and it won’t be disaster, he won’t reach out and take anything. It’s worth it just for that. Sam may have been maneuvering for this all along, the whole road, ever since he let Dean drive away. 

That’s a disturbing thought. Sam should really worry about that. But he’s tired. Dean’s coming. Let Dean deal with the tricks of Sam’s Machiavellian subconscious.

There’s movement in the clearing. The wingclap echo of Cas’s return. It would be cool if there were, like, a Tardis effect when angels materialized. Sam always liked that sound. Though it would make for a hell of a frivolous last wish.

Boots crunch and shuffle through the snow and drifted needles. A shadow falls across Sam’s face again. This time it’s warm and human. 

“Hey,” says Dean’s voice. Sam opens his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't a series per se, but [Last Call](http://archiveofourown.org/works/171625) is the Dean POV follow-up to this, though it was written first.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Here's a Truck Stop Instead of St. Peter's](https://archiveofourown.org/works/679690) by [Balder12](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balder12/pseuds/Balder12)




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